#the dialogue is fast sometimes but that makes it funnier

[linsdoods]

I’ve been watching the first season of saiki k and I love it

[itmeblog]

pg 380

Met a fan of this book today. Had a nice discussion, told him I thought it was bad (he asked, but I'm also 90% sure he didn't hear me regardless) but was able to keep up anyway (note: this book is bad <entertaining/predictable/soap opera> but it's not bad <kill me now> i.e. I'd read this again before picking up Legendborn which has committed the cardinal sin of being bad <checking pages to see how much is left> and boring) . I think he wanted to find anyone who's read it. He's excited for the next book in the series. I hope it's good.

There are few things that give me the ick faster than hearing someone is being claimed by a kiss. At least when the book insists on marketing itself as somewhat vanilla actually throughout the entire book she compares sexual tension to ownership (I mean the lust is quite prevalent but the dom and sub vibes permeating this piece are so weird because it seems to want to separate itself from it "I'd have to be a masochist to date him" but like... you're in the same ball park, babe. Is that a joke? God I hope it was a joke because some of her descriptions are like word for word something you'd find from a sub on r/bdsm)

The quote at the top of the chapter stating "romantic relationships with people outside your year can cause problems for the unit" almost made me laugh out loud because she was doing way more damage by being single and an unwilling participant in a love triangle.

She is, once again, being presented two choices by two men and every day my internal dialogue becomes more insistent don't let men tell you what to do.

This may get me killed, because sometimes men will shout stop to keep you from getting hit by a car but this book is really testing that for me.

Apparently MT is always walking around with a stiffy near her because he wants her so bad which makes any scene he's tried to be cool and collected in retrospectively 10x funnier.

My friend described SK as obstacle shaped and truly he is. His internal dialogue must be a constant loop, I wish he was a character.

Oh, she got more special again. She controls lightning now, which is a fantastic addition to her time stopping powers, and her being bonded to two dragons, and being super clever and incredibly fast and being the first to bond to a baby dragon and having special hair, and a special mom and--

Biggest sin of the sex scene: Every time she orgasms lightning flashes.

I wonder when Emily Wilde's 3rd book releases...

[letterboxd]

Chaotic Bisexual.

Shiva Baby writer-director Emma Seligman tells Ella Kemp about expanding her wildly cringey short film into an even more anxiety-inducing feature, why Virgo and Taurus make the perfect producing pair, and the eternal conflict of being a good Jewish girl.

“If I can skip a bris to see E.T., I like movies!” —Emma Seligman

It sounds like a strange riff on a guy-walks-into-a-bar joke: a girl walks into a shiva and bumps into her secret ex-girlfriend, then her sugar daddy, then his shiksa wife, oh, and their baby—yet the payoff is so much more rewarding.

Filmmaker Emma Seligman’s debut feature is a new kind of teen classic: 78 non-stop minutes teeming with well-drawn traits and tropes that define the best coming-of-agers, the best Jewish comedies and the best day-in-a-life psychological roller-coasters.

Shiva Baby began as a grad project—a short film of the same name—and Seligman’s feature-length embellishment impressed at last year’s virtual editions of SXSW and TIFF, where it was quickly snapped up for international distribution. In a way, Shiva Baby was perfectly tailored to the times we were living in: Danielle, our reluctant heroine, is trapped in a claustrophobic family event she can’t escape, as people from her past and lies about her future make their way deep under her skin.

Fred Melamed, Rachel Sennott and Polly Draper in ‘Shiva Baby’.

Shiva Baby is very much the product of a wry school of emerging filmmakers who understand excruciatingly mundane horror and pin-sharp comedy as intimate bedfellows. Seligman’s writing finds a way to flesh out gloriously caricatural Jewish relatives, probing and overbearing and irrational. She does this both through dialogue and a visceral, haptic aesthetic that lurches in and out of focus visually, and has a nails-on-chalkboard unease sonically.

Coming in hot with a 4.01 average rating, Shiva Baby is striking all sorts of discordant notes with film lovers. “Combines some of my biggest anxieties: being asked if I have a boyfriend as well as what my plans for the future are and people talking with their mouths full,” writes Muriel.

The film’s “bisexual chaos”, which hinges on a haywire performance from Rachel Sennott as Danielle, opposite Molly Gordon’s overachieving ex-girlfriend, Maya, is also one of its great strengths. Glee star Dianna Agron is the shiksa threat, Kim, while Danny Deferrari is Danielle’s hapless benefactor, Max. If that’s not enough? Polly Draper, Fred Melamed and Jackie Hoffman are also just there.

What do you think defines a Jewish sense of humor? Emma Seligman: It’s morbid usually, and darker—generally uncomfortable and cringeworthy. I think about Curb Your Enthusiasm or Seinfeld, and A Serious Man. It borders on, “Is this funny at all?” I think Jewish humor leans into the darkly funny British sense of humor. I’m Canadian, so I feel like I’m halfway between the UK and the US in terms of their sense of humor.

Was it always your intention to make a comedy that feels like a bit of a nightmare? You’ve mentioned Black Swan and Opening Night as touchstones… Because I came from a short film, the question when expanding into a feature was, “How are we going to keep everyone interested in this day?” It’s got to be a significant day, it’s got to be that this young woman’s life has completely changed from this day. So what is it that changes? Why are we watching it? I watched a lot of movies that took place in one day, one of them was Trey Edward Shults’ first film Krisha. And then from there I realized that anxiety and this scary psychological feeling is a great way to have the audience stay there.

I watched Opening Night because there’s a shiva in it, but it was more the lobby scenes that were so claustrophobic and tense. And then each step of the way with each department, we were like, okay, it’s gonna be tense, but then we got to music, I was like, okay, this has become a full nightmare. Initially, I was just like, it’s got to be tense, but by the end, I was like, well, it does feel like a nightmare to a young woman sometimes.

Because you mention that, I have to ask whether you’ve seen Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade? I have, it’s incredible. It’s so funny, they’re both coming-of-age [films], and one of them is about a fourteen year old and then the same sort of feeling exists when you’re 22. When you’re fourteen is when it begins, and when you’re 22 you’re sort of at the end of it and you’re like, “Oh, I thought I figured out what I was supposed to do when I started feeling insecure this way at fourteen about sex and boys.”

Diana Agron and Danny Deferrari in ‘Shiva Baby’.

Let’s talk about Rachel Sennott, who you have describe as your “Virgo rock”. What do you bring one another in your creative partnership? She’s a hustler, and she sets goals like nobody else. I think she moves very fast, and I’m more detail-oriented. I don’t know if the movie would have happened without her because she was like, “What are the goals to achieve this film?” After we made the short film, she just kept checking in with me. She goes well beyond what an actor does, which is why she’s an executive producer, because she was very, very invested in seeing the movie get made.

I think she pushes. We joke that she brings me out of my depression and I help calm her down. I feel like Taurus is a little more chill. Virgos are also earth signs, but they run on a faster frequency. So I think I calm her down, especially when we’re writing and bringing it back to structure. But she’s way funnier, she’s able to give jokes so quickly. We balance each other perfectly, for sure.

Do you think your partnership with Rachel is the kind of partnership you could see yourself maintaining throughout your career? Definitely. I think it’s important to have a good friend and also a young woman. She’s got different career goals from me, but they’re aligned. And we’re not in competition with each other. I feel so grateful because so much of the time I feel like the world does make you feel like you’re in competition with your friends that are trying to do the same thing as you when you’re a young woman—or just maybe in general.

Rachel Sennott and Danny Deferrari in ‘Shiva Baby’.

Her character in Shiva Baby completely subverts the idea of a “nice Jewish boy/girl” which can be a trope in movies, but also very much a real thing in life. Is that something you consciously wanted to subvert, or did it come organically from the story you wanted to tell? I wanted to contrast that idea of a “nice Jewish girl” because every nice Jewish girl or boy has a sex life. I felt the sort of nice Jewish girl stressors on me were completely opposite from the NYU art school sugaring worlds, and hookup culture broadly. My family is such a huge part of my life and I think that those two sets of pressures are completely contradictory; to be a good girl or boy and have a stable career ahead of you, and to be finding, even if it’s at the very beginning, your eventual partner, or to just be in a relationship. And I felt like in school, no one wanted to date, everyone was hooking up. So many of my friends are sugar babies. I tried it super, super briefly.

I felt like the world was telling me to be like “an empowered, independent, sexy woman who doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her, and doesn’t abide by any rules”, and I was like, “This is the opposite of being a nice Jewish girl!” And I just felt like those two things were screaming at me. So I did want to play on that. But I don’t even think it’s playing, just because that felt like what I was trying to battle within myself. And I think a lot of young people do, whether they’re Jewish or not. That’s their family’s expectations. And then the world is like, “But don’t care and don’t commit…”

Writer-director Emma Seligman. / Photo by Emma McIntyre

But then you still have to go home to your parents at the end of the day and they’re going to tell you what to do… Exactly.

What would you want viewers to take away from Shiva Baby about the sugaring community that you feel has been maligned in the past? I’m not a sex worker, so I don’t want to speak on behalf of this community, but I definitely feel like there hasn’t been many positive portrayals of sex workers. So I just wanted to show someone—because I knew so many friends of mine who did it—who enjoyed it, or purposefully did it and didn’t feel bad or shameful about it. I think maybe a lot of people think that it’s always something that comes out of dire circumstances. But whether that is the case or not, I think there’s a lot of people who enjoy it and enjoy what they do like any other job. So I just hope that they’re able to sort of widen their scope of what a sex worker looks like and acts like. Every sex worker has got a family, friends, a full robust life, as we all do.

It’s time for your Life in Film questionnaire. Can you give me a few must-watch Jewish films for people who don’t know where to start? Fiddler on the Roof, Yentl, Keeping the Faith, Kissing Jessica Stein, A Serious Man. Definitely Uncut Gems, and Crossing Delancey.

Shiva Baby has been described on Letterboxd, variously, as “Uncut Gems but make it chaotic bisexual”, “the most stressful Jewish movie since Uncut Gems”, “the chaotic successor of Uncut Gems”, “if Krisha and Uncut Gems had a baby”, and, of course, “Uncut Gems for hot Jewish sluts”… Amazing, I love that. Extremely nice comparison.

Who is your favorite promising young woman? Not Emerald Fennell’s film, but a young creative or performer who you think is making waves. I love Hari Nef—I think she’s amazing and am really excited to see what she does next. I loved her so much in Transparent and Assassination Nation, and I don’t understand why she hasn’t been the lead in a million movies.

Molly Gordon with Rachel Sennott in ‘Shiva Baby’.

What should people watch next after Shiva Baby? Those Jewish movies would be a great start. And then Krisha, although I think a lot of people have seen it especially if they’re on Letterboxd! But then those Jewish romantic comedies, and then Obvious Child, all those movies are very sweet and endearing and helped me make it.

Separate from film, if it’s shiva-related then Transparent. If I didn’t have Transparent I don’t think I would have seen world of grounded, nuanced Jews that I could do comedy with. It would have been more in the Curb vein, which is also amazing, but a little more schtick.

What was the first film that made you want to be a filmmaker? My parents are huge movie buffs so I’m not sure there was one moment, but I will say that when I was six there was a re-release of the 20-year anniversary of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and I was at a horribly packed bris and my uncle was like, “Fuck this, there are so many people here, I can’t even breathe. Let’s go see E.T.” That was the first moment where I was like, if I can skip a bris to see E.T., I like movies.

Related content

From Short to Feature: Rob’s list of 2020 films that made the jump

Jewish Cinema (non-Holocaust): Amelia’s list of films “for when u want to celebrate your heritage but don’t want to have to think all too deeply about the Shoah”

Best Directorial Debuts of 2020: suggested by Letterboxd members, featuring Shiva Baby

Follow Ella on Letterboxd

Shiva Baby is now in select theaters and on VOD in the US. Film stills by Maria Rusche.

[ootori-sibs]

Shadow boy

Day six of @ohshc-week : childhood friends/lovers or first/last kiss

Mrs Ootori was known for her love of fashion, every time there was an event, she wore a new, custom made dress. It just so happened that there was a huge event soon, with people all over the world, the who's who of the global medical industry- and top scientists too. Her only duty was to hang off of her husband's arm and look pretty, but she always made it her mission to show him up. Because of this, she'd enlisted the help of Yuzuha Hitachiin to make her a stunning new gown.

Yuzuha knew her well, having made previous gowns for her- they weren't friends persay, Mrs Ootori was too stuck up for that, but Yuzuha liked to bring her son's with her whenever she came. Mrs Ootori had many sons, one of which was only a year older than her boys.

The twin sought out the shadow boy out, they did this every time, they wanted to know more about him- he was a mystery. Today they'd found their way into the library, not being able to read yet, they ignored the books in exchange for searching for their favourite mystery. They found him in the fiction section, fitting for such a mystery.

The shadow boy never liked the light much, he preferred the darkness and shade. His hair was as dark as the woman their mother helped, but his eyes weren't brown like hers, they were a shimmering silver- the twins had almost thought he was monochrome when they first found him. The boy smiled when he noticed them, standing and approaching them, stopping on the border of the shadows.

The twins smiled back, they were holding hands, but let go to run forward towards their friend, "shadow boy! Hello!" He'd never told them his name, he'd never actually spoken to him either, he was silent in his friendship. He didn't let them touch him either, so they gave him an air-hug.

He showed them a ladder, and led them up on top of the bookshelves, it was dark up here, and the twins and their shadow friend had to crawl, he wanted to show them something- he always wanted to show them something.

He led the twins through a vent, it was a large one, big enough for all of them… they were only three, and their shadow friend was four… it didn't take that big of a vent to hold them all. When they got out of the vent, they were in an office, make-up on one side table, paperwork on another. The desk was a vanity, the computer was new and shiny.

The twins looked around, their eyes already adjusted to the darkness, but Kaoru had brought a torch, making sure to avoid getting the shadow boy with it. They couldn't read, but by the images and make-up, the twins understood that this was Mrs Ootori's office. They wondered why the shadow boy would bring them here, what purpose did they have here?

But the shadow boy grabbed a stool, dragging it over to a wall, reaching up and going to grab a book. He brought it down to show them, placing it on the floor. Kaoru carefully trained his torch on it, it was a book; a big, leather bound, storybook. Hikaru was the one who opened the book, "woah… this is awesome!"

Kaoru nodded, noticing how the shadow boy smiled, "yeah! Amazing! Do you want us to read the voices? Our maids do that for us." The boy's eyes lit up, and the twins both saw his hands ball up happily, he nodded at them, almost silently gasping- the loudest sound they'd heard from him.

The twins once again, couldn't read- it seemed the shadow boy hadn't realised yet. His surprised expression when the twins made up their own dialogue based on the images, making it much funnier then the stories actually were- at least in their opinion; they'd given the villain a horrible voice, made the princess sound like an old man, and their worst offence of all; they gave the prince charming the squeakiest voice they could muster.

This upset the shadow boy.

He'd stood up, turning and hammering on the door until a maid unlocked it for him, the maid asked him how he got in there, since the door was locked. This surprised the twins- other people could see their shadow friend? This was news to them, they didn't think he could be seen. But he didn't seem to see her, running past, completely ignoring the light he was so usually avoidant of.

The twins gave chase, they'd never see their shadow friend so upset- they've seen him cry, sure, but never run straight into the light, he hated the light. So they ran, calling out for their shadow friend to stop, trying to ask what's wrong. After a few seconds, and corridors, later, the twins realise that their friend is headed towards the room where their mother and Mrs Ootori were- and Mrs Ootori was famed for her temper, so they were scared what would happen.

He burst into the room, clearly more terrified than sad by how bright the room was, running to the side of Mrs Ootori and clinging to her, sobbing into her gown. The twins entered soon after, pausing at this sight. All eyes were now on them; their mother looked alarmed, and Mrs Ootori looked furious. "What did you do to my baby?"

She had asked them a simple question, commanding and demeaning- but the twins weren't listening, they didn't care about her dumb status. "That's not your baby, that's our shadow friend!" They huffed in unison, Hikaru hopping up to turn the light off as Kaoru switched the torch on.

Both adults were surprised by both the words and the actions of the twins, Mrs Ootori was even more angered by this. She stomped forward, knocking the shadow boy to the floor- who quickly got up and hid under a table, hands over his head. Mrs Ootori, she must have been around six foot, she towered over the boys, glaring, "how dare you! My son is no one's shadow!" The twins were shaking now, having never been yelled at like this by an adult before, the woman continued; "have you been bullying him?? Why is he crying?"

"Leave my sons alone!" Their mother snapped at her, "they haven't done anything to deserve getting screamed at, they're kids for heaven's sake!" The twins mother was an angel, she stood up to the demon woman, standing and glaring.

The demon scoffed, "oh no wonder they're such brats if you never yell at them! I yell at my sons all the time and they all turn out perfectly." The twins both bristle at the idea of this monster yelling at their poor sweet shadow friend, this demon was terrifying.

They'd blocked that day out of their memory.

Losing their first friend, being yelled at for the first time, their mother had gotten so frustrated she'd punched her mannequin… they didn't want to remember it; so they didn't.

Years later, they had friends, real friends- nothing like the ghost of that old mansion. They had Honey-senpai and Mori-senpai, who sat in the corner making tea and coffee. They had Haruhi, who was watching everything with a tired but lovable expression. They had Tamaki… who was being an idiot, he was floundering around, crying about something or other Haruhi had said.

"My darling daughter hates me! Oh woe is I!"

The twins snickered at that, rolling their eyes. Tamaki must have noticed that, because he gasped, looking at them, "how dare you mock my misery! What's so funny about a daughter hating her father?"

Hikaru raised an eyebrow at that, "oh come on boss…" he and Kaoru shared a glance, before looking back at Tamaki, putting on the fake whining voice used to mock stupid people; "ooh~ my darling daughter hates me! Oh woe- oh woe is I~!"

There was a scoff from behind them, from a table not far back, Kyoya was rolling his eyes, "what is it with you two and giving princes squeaky voices?" He had chuckled to himself, but the question had made the twins freeze… Kyoya was right, they did use that voice for all princes, and had since they were little. But there was no way for Kyoya to know that, only the twins' family had heard them read stories, family and- oh. Oh.

"Wh!" The twins span around at lightning speed, looking at Kyoya with wide eyes, "You were the shadow boy??"

This got the other hosts' attention fast, though Kyoya just raised an eyebrow, "you weren't aware? I did wonder why you started out just as distant to me as you were with Tamaki," he chuckled lightly, actually smiling slightly, "I know you were four but please; a year older than you, we were always at my house, your mother did the gowns for mine- what other conclusion could you have come to?"

The twins… felt a little stupid at that, but Hikaru admitted to their belief, "we honestly thought you were a ghost, hence the whole 'shadow boy' thing…"

"A ghost?" Kyoya seemed to find the whole thing amusing, and the twins noticed how the light reflected off of his her black hair, how the light made his eyes shine behind his glasses… why had he used to hate it so? "I suppose your little nickname fits now, what with people referring to me as the 'shadow king', seems I've gotten a promotion." He had paused, and the twins glanced around to see the confusion in the other hosts' faces, but they didn't matter right now, not in the face of their shadow friend. "Why did you believe me to be a spirit?"

"Oh that's easy!" Kaoru smiled, beginning to list of all the reason their shadow friend was different; "you always hid in dark spaces, never came out to play anywhere bright, we never saw you anywhere but the mansion, you were never there when we arrived, we always had to go searching for you, you always had something to show us, it was always a secret- plus you never once spoke to us dude, you didn't ever even introduce yourself the entire time."

Hikaru spoke up at that, looking thoughtful, "why did you never speak the whole time we knew you?"

Kyoya paused at that, "oh, well some people have- ...things, that they can't do properly, and sometimes those things are amplified by situations, but like a lot of things, they can be learnt from, and moved past," he stopped for a moment, before nodding to himself, "yes, I had quite a bit of trouble with speaking when I was younger, it's nothing to be ashamed of personally, but some people are ashamed of me nonetheless." Was that a joke..? That was a really sad joke, the twins didn't quite know how to take it.

They didn't have to respond though, as Honey hopped over towards them, "wow Kyo-chan! Do you have the same fear as Nekozawa-chan?"

Kyoya shook his head, "well I did when I was five, I grew out of it by the time I was around six or seven, I couldn't have been able to do all too well in school otherwise." He shrugs, going back to his book, "either way, you never answered my question about the voices, why do you insist on such dreadful voices for prince characters?"

The twins had to shrug at that, smiling, "we just think it's funny."

"Well I still don't, it's rather immature. But at least it isn't in a moment of vulnerability this time," and with that, the conversation was over, Kyoya clearly wasn't going to respond to further questioning, so everyone went back to how they were before.

But not Kaoru, Kaoru got closer to Kyoya's table, hands resting on it in fact, "out of curiosity, do you still have that book?"

Kyoya just nodded, "I've had it since I was a baby, it'd be a shame to throw it out now."

Kaoru nodded slowly, a mischievous smirk growing on his face, "and how would you feel if I read you the stories again, using proper voices this time?" He watched Kyoya pause, glancing up at him but clearly not wanting Kaoru to know he's looking, so Kaoru does something even more daring; he winks.

Kyoya chuckles lightly at that, "as long as we can have the lights off."

It was a funny feeling; Kyoya having been his first friend. The idea that this money grubbing mastermind was once his sweet shadow friend, the silent, always watching shadow king- he was once actually silent. He remembers first joining the club, looking at Kyoya and wondering why Tamaki hung out with such an asshole, before realising he and Hikaru were also assholes and that this must be, like, Tamaki's hobby or something. But about a month in Kaoru was wondering why Kyoya hung out with Tamaki, Kyoya was of a much higher calibre- and he knew it. Though it was clear he considered Tamaki to be superior, even though Tamaki's only real power was as club president- and family-wise too Kaoru supposed.

They were sitting in the dark now, Kaoru had a torch- it wasn't the same torch, that old thing was long gone- but it felt the same… yet somehow completely different. They were older now, they knew who they were a little more, Kyoya could speak now- he could audibly react to the things Kaoru was saying, he could laugh… Kaoru loved that laugh, he'd only ever heard Kyoya chuckle before, his laugh was wonderful; it was a full on villain laugh, but not a cackle, not anything malicious, just a genuine powerful laugh, the kind you'd see of a kid villain- but not the bratty kind. It was also different because Kaoru was here of his own accord, every time he'd visited the Ootori mansion before he'd been dragged there by someone else, this time he was he because he'd decided to be- and he was here without Hikaru.

Kaoru had just finished reading the third story in the book; Cinderella- but at some point, Kyoya had taken a pen, and changed all of Cinderella's pronouns to his own- he'd done that for every character that was his favourite in each story. The ending was always different if he wasn't the princess, his favourite always got a prince of their own- even when it wasn't the main prince. Kaoru found it amusing, if a little concerned, was it reflected of the chances he had with Kyoya? After all; they already had a prince character, and Kaoru wasn't charming at all.

He glanced to his side, Kyoya was completely relaxed, somehow having slid under the covers of the bed without Kaoru having noticed, he truly was a shadow wasn't he? "You're going to get cold like that, you should copy me." Oh, he wanted Kaoru to get into bed with him? Well Kaoru was never one to turn down an offer like that, especially if it was completely innocent- he loved a good cuddle.

Surprisingly enough, Kyoya had actually leaned into him halfway through the princess and the frog, mouthing the words along as Kaoru had said them, how sweet… But when Kaoru got to a line that read: 'but I'm only a small frog, who would ever kiss me?', he heard Kyoya mutter words verbally- but a little different to how it was written…

"...but I'm only a shadow, who would ever kiss me..?"

Kaoru paused, knowing he wasn't meant to hear that, but maybe he was meant to hear it… it sounded like fate. He did it without thinking; he tilted Kyoya's head up and gave him a gentle kiss on the lips, before muttering back, "you'll find your prince someday…"

He knew there was no chance of getting with Kyoya, it was safe to assume the shadow had his eyes on a prince already- Kaoru was nowhere near being a prince. But just one kiss, a stolen one at that- if that was all he got, he was happy with that, he didn't need anything special-

"...I don't think I even want a prince anymore…" Kyoya hadn't moved even an inch from the position Kaoru had put him in, but the moment Kaoru looked down at him, Kyoya got up onto his knees. He looked at Kaoru with something Kaoru had only ever seen in girls before, just before their hearts were shattered… "I want to be a shadow boy forever."

Oh. It was Kaoru's heart that felt something painful, but it was a good pain- like his heart had taken a sharp gasp of its own accord. He smiled softly, putting the book down- but not closing it, and turning his torch off, it was pitch black now. "You… are so much more than a shadow boy now, Kyoya- you're a shadow king, it's not some dumb title. It's your truth… and I love the truth."

It wasn't a love confession, Kaoru couldn't do those, and neither could Kyoya- they were simply both too closed off and quiet to express themselves without the aid of their respective extroverts assistance, though Kaoru realised Hikaru was definitely more of an ambivert at this point. It might not have been a confession of love, but it was a confession of something alright, and they kissed, more than just a quick stolen one- this kiss was real, this kiss was warm, and it tasted of coffee…

They broke the kiss after a while, sitting in pitch black as they sat in silence. Neither of them wanted to speak, so they didn't. Kaoru wanted to know the time, but he didn't want to check his phone, so he sat there, wondering. It was clearly dark, from the little he could see of the outside, from the windows downstairs, so he could be forgiven if he fell asleep here…

The book had been moved, and so had the torch, Kaoru hadn't even noticed. He now glanced down at Kyoya who was laying down, looking up at him, and the little light present reflected in his eyes- though Kaoru couldn't see much else of him at all. Instead of seeing, Kaoru felt, realising how Kyoya was allowing him to touch now, the shadow boy would have always been too scared to even high five, Kyoya let Kaoru rest a hand on his hip as he lay down- Kyoya had let Kaoru kiss him. Soon, they were laying down next to each other; facing each other, Kaoru noticed how Kyoya shuffled closer, bowing his head slightly but leaving it to Kaoru to close the gap, to cuddle him.

Kaoru was the smaller of the two, but Kyoya was the one resting his head near Kaoru's chest, though the shadow boy had always been soft- Kaoru couldn't blame him, or complain in the slightest. It was strange to be sleeping next to someone other than Hikaru, but it was nice- completely different though: with Hikaru they'd squabble over who had the most cover, over who got to sleep what side, they rarely cuddled- contrary to popular belief, plus they only really held hands when they could do it comfortably. But with Kyoya, Kaoru found himself making sure Kyoya had enough blanket, he found himself almost cradling the taller boy as if was prone to shatter at any moment, he even found himself humming one of the many disney songs he'd learnt the tube to through osmosis, he was fairly sure this was a love song- either way it was relaxing and sweet.

He remembered being shown this room, though there was a fortress here then, made of cardboard and plastic and paint, a safe haven that the shadow boy had loved to show to the twins, though he'd gotten visibly upset when Hikaru had tried to climb over the walls instead of using the door. Kaoru remembered this fondly, glancing down to realise that said shadow boy had fallen asleep in his arms. Kaoru then allowed himself to stop humming, yawning and nuzzling Kyoya's hair before settling his head down on the pillow, quickly drifting off to a funny thought that made him feel fuzzy inside:

It was a funny feeling; Kyoya having been his first friend and his first kiss.

[skinks]

hi!!! what are your favourite movies? like actually good ones but also any trashy comfort movies? is IT (2017) one of them?

Hello!! IT (2017) IS ABSOLUTELY ONE OF THEM oh man, thank you for this, I love talking about movies!!!! This is possibly the most difficult question you could have asked me. Apologies for how absolutely off the rails this got, I just... love movies so much lmao

I’ve said this before, but opening night of IT ch1 was the best cinema experience I’ve ever had, I’m so glad I got to see it with a fully packed audience who were all laughing and screaming together the whole way through. I’m a huge fan of... everything ch1 was doing, the 80s nostalgia, the summer-coming-of-age themes, the solid ghost train funhouse JOY of the Pennywise performance and scares, the washed-out cinematography, the tiny background details to make everything that much more eerie, the kids’ ACTING?!

Like, a lot of the time I find child actors can be really awkward and stilted to watch, but I remember leaving the cinema really impressed by JDG and Sophia Lillis in particular. I liked that they were all allowed to be little shitheads with potty mouths, it felt like a callback to 80s movies like The Lost Boys or Stand By Me. The whole thing worked to make me really care about what happened to the kids (even if I do still have issues with how they handled Mike. I understand even ch1 had limitations with juggling so many characters, but still). I saw it another 2 times in the cinema and have rewatched it at least, I dunno, 7-10 more times since then?

Add to all of that the retroactive CANON R+E baby pining subplot? I just love it, as if that wasn’t obvious by now given my Whole Blog. It’s a really special movie to me!

Anyway!! Ok, the main handful of movies I rewatch all the fucking time are:

Back to the Future, The Lost Boys, Pride and Prejudice (2005), Jaws, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Breakfast Club, Ocean’s 11, POTC 1, The Dark Knight, Inception, Die Hard, LOTR trilogy, Snatch, The Nice Guys, Logan Lucky, Mad Max Fury Road, Clueless, 10 Things I Hate About You, Billy Elliot, Dirty Dancing, Tomb Raider (2018)...

Those are the easily consumable ones that I’ve seen so many times I don’t really have to concentrate or think about them, but I really love them and unfortunately often KEEP rewatching them instead of new stuff. It would take too long to go into why I love all these movies so much because I could write the same amount as I already did for ITCH1, and everyone already knows why those movies are good, so, lol.

I think I’m gonna have to subdivide and categorise this whole post because there are too many separate criteria for... goOD MOVIES, AUUHH 😩

Okay so first off, HORROR MOVIES? I’m especially in love with Re-Animator (1985) and its sequel Bride of Re-Animator, they’re such good examples of camp and batshit 80s practical effects, and also EXTREMELY funny. I’m actually just gonna post my list of my fave horror movies that I do actually keep on my phone at all times lmao. These are in no particular order:

Wholeheartedly recommend every one of these. I’ve never been so scared in my life as I was watching Hereditary in the cinema, hoo boy. Mother! by Aronofsky is one of the strangest experiences I’ve ever had (and I actually saw it on the same day I saw IT ch1 for the first time!! That was a fun day)

Psycho (1960) and The Fly from 1986 should also be on there but I couldn’t fit them in the screenshot.

I’m a HUGE fan of a ton of martial arts movies too, like Kung Fu Hustle, Shaolin Soccer, Ip Man, The Raid movies, John Wick 3 is my fave of the trilogy, Drive from 1997 with Mark Dacascos is incredible, SPL 2, Ong-Bak, Operation Condor, Project A, Iron Monkey, and Zatoichi (2003) are some favourites.

My favourite Tarantino is Reservoir Dogs, fave Coen brothers are Raising Arizona, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and O Brother Where Art Thou. Love some old-timey colour correction and weird offbeat dialogue. I also love Goodfellas!!! And Donnie Brasco! And The Firm, I’m so easy for any good crime/law/gangster/heist procedural like that, especially if they’re from the 80s or 90s in a super dated way.

Fave Disney movie is Tarzan, favourite Ghibli movies are Spirited Away and Lupin III. I remember watching Spirited Away during a thunderstorm one time and it being.... god! Transcendent! Favourite Pixar movie is The Incredibles (the first one. ALSO the documentary “The Pixar Story” is great and well worth a watch, it’s very comforting for some reason) and my favourite Dreamworks movies are HTTYD1 and Spirit: Stallion of the Cimmaron.

I tend to watch more anime movies than tv shows, so stuff like Akira, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars, Journey to Agartha, and my ultimate fave anime is Sword of the Stranger (2008). The climactic fight in that movie is fucking stunning and should be counted in “bests fights” lists right alongside anything live action

Also if we’re talking animated movies another hearty favourite is Rango, and a Belgian stop-motion (which at one time I considered my favourite movie ever) called Panique Au Village (2009) which is one of the funniest movies ever made imo.

As for TRASHY movies, I’m not sure if that’s the right word for how I feel about these ones but.. dumb/silly/slightly guilty pleasure movies? Ones that I feel need some kind of justification lmfao

Troy - something u must know about me is that I’m a giant slut for the Assassin’s Creed franchise, so if a movie smashes historical and mythological nonsense together with fun costumes and sword fights, I’m gonna enjoy myself. Even if they should have made Achilles and Patroclus gay. Other movies in this vein are King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, and Immortals (2011)

Gods of Egypt - I know all the reasons this movie is whitewashed bullshit. But it was already bullshit with giant Anubis mecha and giant snakes and bad acting and ridiculous CGI and frankly I had a blast at the cinema (my friend who I forced to come with me did not have a blast. Sorry H***)

Avatar - yes, the one with the big blue people. This movie gets a lot of flack nowadays but I really do enjoy it just for the spectacle. The full CGI world technology was so new at the time and I love to wallow in the visuals and daydream about riding a cool dragon around in the jungle

George of the Jungle - I’ll defend this movie to the death ok this movie shaped me as a person, it is fucking hilarious and Brendan Fraser is the himbo to end all himbos. It’s perfect. The song Dela is perfect. I still want to write a reddie AU about it. It’s one of the best movies ever made and I’m not being ironic

Set It Up - I KNOW this is a dumb Netflix original romcom but consider this; it was funny and the leads had great chemistry. I got butterflies. I once watched it and then literally immediately set it back to the start so I could watch it again

The Brady Bunch Movie - when people talk about great satires or parodies you will see them bring up the same movies over and over again, Blazing Saddles, This Is Spinal Tap etc, but they never talk about The Brady Bunch Movie from 1995 for some reason, which they should. It is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen and every time i watch it somehow it gets funnier

Some more general favourites that I do still love but don’t rewatch as often, and don’t wanna go into more detail about are:

Moon (2009), Crna Mačka Beli Mačor, The Sixth Sense, Parasite, The Handmaiden, Tremors, Wet Hot American Summer, Tucker and Dale vs Evil, What We Do In The Shadows, Hunt For the Wilderpeople, The Secret of My Success (I love kitschy 80s movies, is that obvious by now), The Green Mile, When Harry Met Sally, Rear Window, The Odd Couple, Breaking Away, Pan’s Labyrinth, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Eagle, Gladiator, The Artist, The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec, Call Me By Your Name, Master and Commander, Pacific Rim, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Legend (1985), Emma. (2020), Flash Gordon, Trolljegeren, Hross í Oss, Beverly Hills Cop, Coming to America, WarGames, District 9, Ajeossi (2010), Tracks (2013), Sightseers, Mud (2012), Pitch Black, Four Lions, Shaun of the Dead, Starship Troopers, The Truman Show, Withnail & I....... Jesus Christ ok I need to stop

NOTABLE EXTREME FAVOURITES that I didn’t include in the regular rewatch list because they’re too heavy/not as well known/require more attention.:

Thin Red Line (1998), Badlands (1973) both dir. Terrence Malick

Malick’s brand of dreamy impressionistic filmmaking is something I find really appealing, both of these movies are gorgeous and unusual and poignant and, in the case of Thin Red Line at least, have a lot of things to say about a lot of rough subjects. I don’t totally understand all those things sometimes, but a theme with a lot of my favourite movies is that I’ll be more likely to love something long-term if it raises unanswered questions, or is surreal/esoteric etc. Plus the cinematography is incredible, and I wish there was a way to get Jim Caviezel’s narration from The Thin Red Line as an audiobook because it’s very poetic and soothing.

Let the Bullets Fly (2010) dir. Jiang Wen

This movie is WILD, it’s so much fun. It’s sprawling and intricate and epic and smart and really fucking funny, it! Has! Everything! A gang of very tolerant outlaws!! Jiang Wen’s beautiful broad chest!!! Chow Yun Fat absolutely DECIMATING the scenery, and the two of them outsmarting each other in order to gain control of a small Chinese town!!! Plus it’s long, but it packs so much nonsense and intrigue that it goes by really fast. Wow what a flick

A Field in England (2013) dir. Ben Wheatley

I know I included this in my horror list but aaaaahhh ahhhh Wheatley is one of my favourite directors (he also made Sightseers, and is directing the Tomb Raider sequel which makes me absolutely rabid.) This is a surreal black-and-white psychological horror black comedy set in the English Civil War about some deserters who may or may not meet the Devil in a field. People eat mushrooms. It’s bonkers. I love being blasted in the face with imagery that I don’t understand

Mandy (2018) dir. Panos Cosmatos

Speaking of being blasted in the face!!!!! This movie... I saw it in the cinema and I can’t even begin to explain the experience, but I’ll try. My favourite review site described it like this:

“...somewhere between a prog album cover come to life and a metal album cover come to life, and subscribes to both genre's artistic tendency towards maximalism: what it ends up being is basically naught else but two glorious hours of being pounded by bold colors...”

So, prog and metal are my two favourite genres of music. This movie opens with the quote “When I die, bury me deep, lay two speakers at my feet, put some headphones on my head and rock and roll me when I'm dead.” and then a King Crimson song, it is SURREAL to the nth degree, it’s violent and bizarre and Nic Cage forges a giant silver axe to destroy demonic bikers and there is a CHAINSAW DUEL. A galaxy swirls above a quarry. Multiple animated horror nightmare sequences. At one point a man says “you exude a cosmic darkness” and releases a live tiger. At another point Cage says, in a digitally deepened voice, “The psychotic drowns where the mystic swims. You’re drowning. I’m swimming.” and I haven’t stopped thinking about it for two years

Paper Moon (1973) dir. Peter Bogdanovich

Really fantastic movie set in the Great Depression (and also in black & white) about a conman and a little kid who may or may not be his daughter, running cons across the Midwest. It’s beautifully shot, so sharp and sweet and the progression of their dynamic is really well done because they’re played by an IRL father and daughter. Tatum O’Neal was NINE YEARS OLD and she’s so amazing in this movie she’s actually the youngest person to win a competitive category Oscar. I keep trying to get people to watch this fbdjfjdbf it’s wonderful

Alpha (2018) dir. Albert Hughes

THIS MOVIE IS A VICTIM OF BAD MARKETING ok, the trailers made it look like some twee crappy sentimental Boy And His Dog Adventure, plus it had voiceovers in American-accented english? That’s a total disservice to one of the coolest things about this film; the fact that they got a linguist to construct an entirely original Neolithic language that all the characters speak for the entire runtime. And yes, it is eventually a Boy And His Wolf adventure, but it’s COOL and fairly brutal, and it has some really incredible cinematography. The landscapes are so strange and barren and alien, you really get the sense that this is an ancient world we no longer have any connection to. And it’s also about like, the birth of dog & human companionship sooo it’s perfect.

Free Solo (2018) dir. Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin

The Free Climbing Documentary. I loved climbing as a kid, I love outdoor sports, and I love movies that elicit a physical reaction in me, whether that’s horny, scared, real laughter, overwhelming shivers, or in the case of Free Solo - HORRIBLE SWEATING TENSION. Like, I knew about Alex Honnold beforehand because of this adventure film festival I go to every year and I followed him on IG so obviously I knew he lived, but the actual climb itself was torture. My hands sweat every time I see it!! It’s incredible, such a cool look into generally what the human body can do, and more specifically, why Honnold’s psychology and life means he’s so well suited to free soloing. It’s such an exercise in getting to know an individual and get invested in them, before they attempt something very potentially fatal.

Brokeback Mountain (2005) dir. Ang Lee

I can’t even talk about this. When I was around 13 I snuck downstairs to watch this on TV at 11pm in secret, and my life was forever changed. I wouldn’t be who I am if I hadn’t seen Brokeback at the age I did. I seriously can’t talk about this or I’ll write an even longer essay than this already is

God’s Own Country (2017) dir. Francis Lee

The antidote to Brokeback Mountain, I’m so glad I managed to see this one in the cinema too. It makes me cry every time, as someone who’s spent years working on a cold British farm with sheep it was very realistic, which is expected since Lee grew up on a farm in Yorkshire. I love that this movie isn’t really about being closeted, but about being so emotionally repressed and self-loathing that the main character finds it so hard to accept love. Or that he deserves to be loved. The cinnamontographies.... lordt... but also the intimacy and sex scenes are fucking searing wow who hasn’t seen this movie by now. 10 stars. 20 stars!!!

Tomboy (2011) dir. Céline Sciamma

I saw this years ago but I’ve never forgotten it, it cut so deep. It’s from the director of Portrait of a Lady on Fire and it’s about a gnc kid struggling with gender and misogyny and homophobia in a really raw, scrappy way, it reminded me very much of my own... childhood... ahh the central performance is amazing for such a young age. I haven’t seen Portrait yet but I feel like if you went nuts for that, you should definitely check this out, it’s lovely.

Donnie Darko (2001) dir. Richard Kelly

EVERY TIME I WATCH THIS MOVIE I UNDERSTAND LESS AND LESS and that’s what I love so much about it. I love surreal movies, I love time-fuckery and stuff about altered perception etc etc and Donnie Darko scratches all my itches. I wish I could find a way to figure out an IT AU for it, because I know it would work! Somehow! Plus it’s got the subdued 80s nostalgia and I found it at an age when I was really starting to explore movies and music and the soundtrack FUCKS.

Offside (2006) dir. Jafar Panahi

I wish more people knew about this!!! It’s an Iranian film about a disparate group of women and girls who are football fans and want to watch Iran’s qualifying match for the World Cup, but women aren’t allowed into the stadium, so they all get thrown into the Stadium Jail together? They don’t know each other beforehand, but it’s about their changing relationships with each other and the guards and just, their defiance alongside hearing the match from the outside and WOW it’s so lively. Great dialogue and very funny, and such a different kind of story from anything you usually see from Hollywood.

The Fall (2006) dir. Tarsem Singh

This movie... I guess it’s the ideal. This is the platonic ideal of a film for me, it has fantasy, magical realism, glorious visuals, amazing score and costumes and production design and a really interesting, heartbreaking relationship at the core of it. I don’t know why so many of my favourite films feature incredibly raw performances by child actors but this is another one, Catinca Untaru barely knew any English and improvised so much because of that, and it’s fascinating to watch! Also the dynamic with Lee Pace is one of my favourites, where a kid forms a friendship with a guardian figure who isn’t their parent, but the guardian grows to really care for them by the end. It’s like Paper Moon in that sense. What is there to even say about this movie, it’s pure magic joy tempered and countered by genuine gutwrenching emotional conflict in the real world, it’s also ABOUT old moviemaking, in a way, and it’s stunning to look at!

Mad Max Fury Road (2015) dir. George Miller

I know I included this in my “most rewatched” section but it deserves its own thing. We all know why this movie is fucking incredible. I remember clutching my armrests in the cinema and feeling like my skeleton was being blasted back into the seat behind me and tbh that is the high I’m constantly chasing when I go to see any movie. What a fucking gift this film is

Théo et Hugo dans le Même Bateau (2016) dir. Olivier Ducastel, Jacques Martineau

I only found this movie last year and it became an instant favourite. Initially I was just curious because I’d never seen a movie with unsimulated sex before, but it’s so much more than the 18 minute gay sex club orgy it opens with. No, not more than, AS WELL AS. The orgy is important because this movie is so candid and frank about sex and HIV treatment in the modern day, it was eye-opening. Another thing that really got me is that I’d never seen a real-time film before. It’s literally an hour and a half in the lives of these two men, their intense connection and conversation and conflict in the middle of the night in Paris, with some really nice night photography and just!!! Wow!!! AMAZING CHEMISTRY between the actors. This is such a gem if you’re comfortable with explicit sexual content.

Ok. This is already over 3k but film is obviously one of my ridiculous passions and I can and do talk about it for hours. I’ve been reading magazines about it for years, listening to podcasts and reading review blogs and recently, watching video essays on YouTube because the whole process is so interesting to me and I want to learn more!!

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of valuing form over narrative. The idea that story can often come second to the deeper physical experience and emotional reaction that’s created by using ALL the elements of filmmaking and not just The Story, y’know? Whether that’s editing, shot composition, colour, the sound mix, the actors, how it should all be used to heighten the emotional state the script wants you to feel. And so, I think for a few years now this approach has been influencing the types of films I really, really love.

I think I love surreality and mind-bending magical realism in films specifically because the filmmakers have to use all those different tools to convey things that can be way too metaphysical for just... a script? I’m always chasing that physical response; if a movie can make me stop thinking “I wonder what it was like to set up that shot” and instead overwhelm that suspension of disbelief, if I can be terrified or woozy or crying for whatever reason, that’s what I’m looking for. That’s why I watch so many fuckin movies, and why I’ll always remember nights like seeing IT (2017) for giving me another favourite.

Thank you again for this question, I didn’t mean to go so overboard. Also there’s no way to do a readmore on tumblr mobile so apologies to anyone’s dashboard 😬

[dragonheart-swtor]

One whole person asked for it (thank you @thornhands for giving me the excuse I needed to post this), so here it is: the original, and much more serious, version of me summarizing the Agent’s first interaction with Ardun Kothe. I eventually removed it entirely from my Imperial Agent Drunk History Storyline summary and replaced it with a version both much shorter and much funnier, but when I was originally summarizing this storyline to a friend of mine (which is where these Drunk History posts originated), I actually really wanted to get across the absolute horror of this particular scene in how I relayed it, because it truly shook me in-game playing it the first time. It’s a fantastically well-executed moment, and I wanted to convey the horror and realization of the scene as best I could through a wildly different format.

I like to think I succeeded.

Enjoy.

- you do some missions for the SIS, whatever, it's not important. You finally get to meet the rest of the team - and Ardun Kothe.

- Kothe wants to speak alone, which is p typical tbh. He expresses some doubts, which you assuage as best you can; he gives you your code name: Legate. It's from a form of sabbac, he explains, you'll have to play with him sometime.

- Everything is going fine.

- "I'm sorry about this, Legate."

- What?

- "Keyword: onomatophobia. Engage Thesh protocols, phase one."

- Everything is not fine.

- The screen, your vision, distorts. You watch your character clutch their head and fall to their knees, visibly reeling, and then black out.

- Muffled, distorted voices

- Kothe discussing with someone else, saying, "I don't know if you can hear me."

- "Wake up."

- And you do.

- You have dialogue options. I don't recall them exactly, but something like, -What did you do? -What happened?

- No matter what you select. The words you say don't match your dialogue option at all. A completely wooden tone, instead, emotionless and dead, just like the complete lack of facial expression. "I'm awake. Awaiting orders."

- "Sit down."

- You do.

- "Now jump."

- You do, the jerk from sitting to jumping so fast there's almost no standing animation in between. It's unnerving.

- "Aim your rifle."

- You do. Directly at him. For some godforsaken reason, you don't fire.

- "Revert to phase zero. You can talk now."

- Another dialogue wheel. At least this time your dialogue matches it. (Except one of the options reads [Shoot him.] If you select it, nothing happens at all.)

- He apologizes - apologizes - and explains that he didn't put the programming in your head - he just activated it. You won't be able to harm him or any members of his team. You won't be able to tell anyone about your programming. Anyone who has your keyword will be able to take complete control of your actions - you'll have to obey him and anyone he gives it to.

- He says he wishes this hadn't been necessary but can't take the risk. He seems to hold some genuine regret. (If you're like Eris, it doesn't matter.)

Bonus: the parts immediately afterward that got left in, but edited to make them more light-hearted to fit the tone of the Drunk History posts:

- You go on to work double agent, like it was planned, with this new.. twist. He told the truth about one thing; if you try to explain to your Watcher what's happening, that horribly wooden tone comes into your voice again as you just state that everything is fine and under control.

- You work multiple missions. About a third of the way through the chapter, you start having hallucinations - seeing things you know can't be real during a holocall, passing out in the middle of your ship and waking up in medbay.

- After that, a new voice lives in your head: Watcher X, someone you either killed or let flee on Nar Shaddaa. Whether he's a personality the real Watcher X implanted with the spinal implant he gave you or just a figment of your broken mind trying to process its situation is never made clear. Either way, he helps you as you try to figure out how to undo this programming before it's too late.

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #455

Top Ten Comedy Sidekicks

Ha, LOL, ROFL, guffaw, snort. Comedy, eh? You’ve got to love it, unless you somehow fall through a timewarp into a late-seventies working men’s club in Blackburn and you find yourself choking to death on second-hand smoke, mother-in-law jokes, and a simmering undercurrent of racist violence. Good times!

Anyway, it’s fairly common that even in the most serious of narratives and with the most serious of protagonists, we need a little chuckle very now and again (nobody tell Zack Snyder – actually, no, scratch that, somebody definitely tell Zack Snyder). It lightens the load, makes the world more nuanced and realistic, and even makes the truly dark moments stand out all the stronger. Most films have a bit of a joke every once in a while (and, of course, Shakespeare’s tragedies are full of comic characters or bits of business), and one very common trope is the Comedy Sidekick.

What is a Comedy Sidekick? Well, it’s a supporting character who offers comic relief, basically. sometimes this can be obviously discernible – Luis in Ant-Man, for example, may function as a plot engine from time to time, but has little in the way of actual character development and is mostly there to be funny whilst the heroes do hero stuff. Sometimes it’s harder to define; I mean, are either of the Blues Brothers a comedy sidekick? Arguably Jake is the lead and Elwood is a bit more of a “turn” (he’s almost eternally deadpan and unemotional), but I’d never say one was inherently funnier or “straighter” than the other. And the you get onto films like Aladdin: sure, Aladdin himself is obviously the protagonist, and there’s an argument to be made that the Genie is a comic relief supporting character, but I feel in this case he’s far too integral to the plot, played by a significantly more famous actor, and really just dominates the film to the extent that he becomes the de facto lead (see also: Captain Jack Sparrow). Again, in Men in Black, Will Smith’s J is clearly the “funny” one, but Smith is also the bigger star and the audience entry point; plus, Tommy Lee Jones is hilarious as the deadpan K. So it’s not as simple as it may first appear.

Anyway, the ten in this list are ones I define as definitely being supporting characters. They may be big characters, in terms of plot or development, but they’re definitely there in support of another protagonist. And whilst they may be fully-rounded characters with their own arcs, their primary function is to be funny; they’re the ones who deliver the comedy lines back to the main character, or crack a joke at the end of a serious bit.

Right, I think that’s my usual ridiculous caveats out of the way. Now let’s make ‘em laugh.

Baldrick (Tony Robinson, Blackadder series, 1983-99): Baldrick is one of the supreme comic idiots in all of fiction. Serving as a perfect foil to Blackadder, he is not only supremely stupid but also his niceness and naiveté serves to undercut his master’s wickedness; plus his idiocy is often the undoing of Blackadder’s villainous plans. But he is also charmingly fully-rounded, oblivious to his own stupidity, possessed of “cunning plans”, and with a great love of turnips. A phenomenal turn from Robinson.

Sir John Falstaff (various plays by William Shakespeare, from 1597): is it cheating to include as significant and iconic a literary figure as Falstaff? Feels a bit like it, especially as he's practically a lead (and, indeed, becomes one in Merry Wives). But really he’s the archetype: a supremely vain and self-serving comic foil, but one with vast hidden depths as he’s keenly aware of his own frailties and the inevitable end of his good times with Prince Hal.

Father Dougal McGuire (Ardal O’Hanlon, Father Ted 1995-98): in many ways he’s a slightly watered-down version of Baldrick’s comic idiot; but Dougal is, if anything, even stupider, and less self-aware. He’s like a perfect idiot, a beautiful naïve fool, a supreme man-child with his Masters of the Universe duvet. And he’s divine, just incredibly hilarious throughout; and, like Baldrick, serves as the perfect foil for his more duplicitous and cynical elder.

Donkey (Eddie Murphy, Shrek, 2001): animated sidekicks are very often the comic relief, and I’d argue that Murphy’s Donkey is as good as they come. I actually think Murphy’s prior turn as Mushu in Mulan is probably the better character, but Donkey is just a comic force of nature, a creature who exists only to make everything dafter and funnier. It allowed Murphy a chance to go all-out in a way he hadn’t on screen for quite some time, and it was something we’d rarely seen in animation (arguably only Robin Williams’ Genie is in the same ballpark). Plus, he actually is a good friend to Shrek, bringing out his better nature. Well done, Eddie!

Danny Butterman (Nick Frost, Hot Fuzz, 2007): another of those characters who really skirts the edges of “supporting comic relief” and is really a deuteragonist. But I feel like most of Frost’s characters in his partnerships with Simon Pegg are, essentially, supportive; Pegg is almost always the lead. In this film, despite Danny having some great development and functioning almost as a romantic partner for Pegg’s Nick Angel, he’s usually presented as a beautiful comic foil, his folksy, slobby demeanour contrasting perfectly with Angel’s straitlaced professionalism. And – for the second film in a row – he gets a tremendous C-bomb.

Luis (Michael Peña, Ant-Man, 2015): another comic fool, Luis is the silly, charming, endearing, loveable thorn in the side of Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang. He’s daft, yeah, and comes across as a bit dim, but his permanently-smiling demeanour means we just keep on loving him, even when we can see how annoying he would be. but what cements his position is his rapid-fire OTT explanations, and how the movie presents them; pieces of comedic joy in the MCU.

Cosmo Brown (Donald O’Connor, Singin’ in the Rain, 1952): Singin’ is one of those great Golden Age movies full of witty dialogue (as well as great songs, natch), and by its nature Gene Kelly is the lead and therefore straight man, whereas O’Connor’s Cosmo can be wackier and funnier, and in doing so get to the truth of what his friend is feeling. But what really gets him in this list is his performance of “Make ‘Em Laugh”, running up walls like he’s in The Matrix or something, and feeling like a Bugs Bunny cartoon brought to life.

Silent Bob (Kevin Smith, View Askiewniverse, from 1994): I guess you could argue that both Bob and his less-silent colleague Jay are, as a twosome, the comedy sidekicks in whichever films they’re in (apart from the two they headline, I guess); but if you take the pair on their own, I’d say Bob is the comic of the duo. Yeah, it’s Jay who’s the mile-a-minute loudmouth, cracking jokes and being explosively filthy. But who really gets the laughs? For my money it’s Smith’s perfectly-judged expressions, punctuating the pomposity or reinforcing the eccentricity of whatever Jay’s on about. And then every now and again he gets to speak, and delivers a great one-liner (“no ticket!”) or serious, heartfelt monologue (cf. Chasing Amy).

Semmi (Arsenio Hall, Coming to America, 1988): Semmi is supposed to be a loyal and devoted servant to Prince Akeem, and he is, I guess; but he’s also a true friend. Akeem’s quest to find love in New York is genuine, and despite the film’s high joke quantity, Eddie Murphy has to be relatively restrained in his lead role. Hall’s Semmi, on the other hand, gets to be acerbic, throwing shade and barbs at his lord, questing their quest and seeking his own share of wealth and, well, women. And we all love his line “you sweat from a baboon’s balls”.

Dory (Ellen DeGeneres, Finding Nemo, 2003): as discussed above, comedy cartoon sidekicks are a cinematic staple. They’re not often female, however, and even more rare is a female character who gets to be both funnier and seemingly dumber/goofier than the lead. Of course, Dory is full of pathos, a borderline tragic character whose chronic memory loss has a dreadful impact on her day-to-day life. It’s her sunny optimism (“just keep swimming!”) that makes her endearing more than her humour, however; and, of course, it’s this optimism that begins to chip away at Marlin’s (Albert Brooks’) flinty suit of armour. Funny, warm, makes our hero a better person, but can be a little bit sad – perfect comedy sidekick.

There are two that I’m annoyed that I couldn’t fit in so I'll mention them here: Carrie Fisher in When Harry Met Sally and Danny Kaye in White Christmas. In the former case, whilst Fisher’s Marie is hilarious throughout, and definitely comic relief when put alongside the relatively straight Sally, the fact that everyone, really, gets a lot of funny lines in what is a consistently funny film kinda knocked her down the rankings a little bit, even though I feel bad about it, because everything is always better if Carrie FIsher is in it, including these lists. Kaye’s Phil Davis in White Christmas absolutely steals that film from Bing Crosby, with fast-paced witty wordplay and some supreme physical comedy, and the running gag about how he saved the life of Crosby’s Bob Wallace is golden. But, I dunno, he just kept slipping down the list, despite being my favourite thing in that film. Sorry, Danny.

[mobius-prime]

222. Sonic the Hedgehog #154

Songoose (Part 2 of 2)

Writer: Karl Bollers Pencils: Ron Lim Colors: Jason Jensen

Today's issue is a bit bittersweet. While Karl Bollers hasn't always been the most popular writer, and I've definitely had my fair share of problems with certain aspects of his writing, it's hard to deny the heavy impact he had on the world of the comic. And this just so happens to be his last issue as a writer! That's right, though we've seen various writers come and go, this is the first time we're truly saying goodbye to a head writer. (You might be wondering about Michael Gallagher given his increasingly infrequent involvement with the series, but fear not, he's still got a few more future issues left in 'im.) Apparently he actually had quite a few plans for the storyline and characters post-StH#134, which was a while ago, but for one reason or another these never came to fruition, and never even had a chance to be salvaged for future issues by other writers due to his leaving the comic. So let's dedicate this issue to ol' Karl and the hard work he put into this comic, and appreciate what he brought to the table over the years. Onward!

It's the night of Mina's second concert, and the various Freedom Fighters are positioned at strategic points around and behind the stage and crowd to guard the venue from any more assassination attempts. Mina is pleased with Sonic's involvement in her protection detail, but Ash is considerably less so, and asks to speak to Mina privately before her performance. Sonic initially tries to refuse to leave her side given his duty to her, but when Ash gets in his face about it Mina steps in and tells Sonic she'll be okay to have a quick chat. Sonic reluctantly leaves the dressing room, and Ash confronts Mina about her decision to go through with tonight's concert, as he really feels it's too dangerous. She reiterates her feeling of security with Sonic around, and Ash's feelings of jealousy finally spill out as he details Sonic's perceived failings, including how he (totally unintentionally mind you) broke her heart a year ago by kissing Sally in front of her. He paradoxically refuses to "forgive" Sonic for… not dating Mina, I guess? Which you'd think he'd be pleased about considering that's the only reason he ever got to date her, but she stands firm against his tirade.

Really bad timing on this, Ash. Honestly, though, as abrasive and jealous as Ash can be, he's not wrong at all about his accusations, and in my opinion has every right to feel slighted and upset. He really does seem like a guy who's flawed yet genuinely likable - I mean, put yourself in his shoes (assuming you're not down for open relationships) and tell me you wouldn't feel the exact same way upon seeing your girlfriend routinely eyeing up another guy. Plus, he isn't flaky - notice that despite breaking up with Mina, he explicitly states his intentions to remain as her band manager. A lesser person might have left their ex high and dry out of spite, but despite their disagreement he's still completely ready and willing to help her organize everything she needs to remain a pop star. Careful, Mina, you better remember "Aly's" advice to you from a few issues ago before you let this guy slip through your fingers…

Outside the room, Sonic gets a call from Sally looking for an update, and when he lets slip that he let her stay in her dressing room alone Sally scolds him for not sticking to her like glue, ordering him back into the room to check on her. When he enters he's surprised to see her sitting alone with a sad expression, asking her what's bothering her. You'd think he'd have some clue of what was wrong considering he would have just seen Ash angrily stomping right through the very door he was guarding, but Mina just says she doesn't know how to explain, which Sonic quietly agrees with the sentiment of. She's able to collect herself for her performance, though, and begins by singing another song that definitely feels inspired by her crush on Sonic. However, Eggman's plan to kill her is still moving ahead, and he sends out Heavy and Bomb (well, Bombs, there's a lot of them) to infiltrate the concert crowd once the concert is well underway.

Sonic immediately grabs Mina and pulls her away from the edge of the stage while the rest of the Freedom Fighters rush in to battle the Bombs, something which I find funnier than it should be considering they're, well, bombs, and the best plan for dealing with bombs on legs would usually be to run the hell away from them before they blow up. Nevertheless, they seem to be holding their own by throwing or smacking the Bombs away before they explode, though Ash finds an excuse in the situation to insist once more than Sonic leave so he can protect Mina on his own, even somewhat spitefully pointing out that Mina was fine without Sonic for an entire year before now. Sonic initially refuses, but when Heavy himself arrives, crashing down onto the stage to target Mina directly, Sonic concedes and tells Ash to take her somewhere safe while he fights the robot one on one. At first Sonic teases and trash talks as normal, but when Heavy gives him more trouble than he bargained for he concocts a plan to drill into the earth and bait Heavy into following him, then drill straight into the nearby lake from below. This washes them both out into the open waters, disabling Heavy in the process. I'm not sure exactly how this plan even works, considering we've seen in previous issues that Heavy is waterproof - I mean, did Eggman take out that feature when he rebuilt him? - but either way, it does work, though Sonic falls unconscious once he gets washed out. Man, between his first battle against M in StH#132 and his easy escape from a watery grave in Anti-Mobius just a few issues ago, it really seems like later comic issues like to play fast and loose with the whole "he can't swim" character trait. Sometimes he can detangle himself from tight rope bonds and swim to safety without a problem, and other times he blacks out within scant seconds of touching water, and you never know which one you're gonna get till the plot calls for it. Of course, he's fine after waking up on shore, having been rescued by Bunnie, and the Freedom Fighters tell him that as far as they can tell they disabled or destroyed every Bomb in the area, meaning Mina is safe once more. With the threat ended, Sonic and Mina say goodbye to each other for the night, with Sonic making Mina promise they'll go out for chili dogs sometime soon. However, this wouldn't be a story if something didn't go wrong…

I like to think that this isn't even a case of the Freedom Fighters randomly missing a Bomb, rather being part of Eggman's plan - send in the big, obvious cavalry first to be fought and predictably defeated, then send in one last little Bomb to finish the job once everyone's guard is down. The explosion alerts everyone outside the backstage area, and they rush in to find Mina sobbing over Ash's body. Don't worry, though - when they rush him to the hospital Dr. Quack is able to get him in a stable condition, meaning that though he has a long slow recovery ahead he'll ultimately be fine. Sonic escorts a distraught Mina into Ash's room, where she admits her true feelings to his sleeping form.

I'm surprised that Sonic genuinely seems a little disappointed at their reconciliation, but then again, he and Mina were clearly shown to have some chemistry even before the time skip, though Sonic was obviously drawn more to Sally. It seems that with he and Sally currently being on the outs, and Mina having split from Ash, he had actually considered taking the chance with her - I mean, they did agree to a chili dog date after all - but now that's obviously not happening. Well, maybe the chili dog date is, but not Sonic and Mina becoming an item. What I'm trying to say is, this page has just sunk your Sonic/Mina ship. Fortunately, with this second failure Eggman has decided that trying to kill Mina is too hard and not worth his time, so she should be safe for now. He still finds himself lamenting the loss of his robotic body, however (something that you'd think should be child's play for him to fix considering previously roboticizing himself is literally part of his backstory), finding his current organic body too breakable. The use of that word suddenly makes him pause, having just come up with a new idea… but Karl certainly won't be the one writing about it, as with that final line of dialogue, he's officially completed his time as head writer for the Archie Sonic comics! Sayonara, Karl Bollers - though there were certainly some rough patches, on the whole I enjoyed your work on the comic, and we'll miss ya!

More Than Meets the Eye

Writer/Pencils: Ken Penders Colors: Josh Ray

…though remember, we are still dealing with Penders for a few more issues yet. Since the mission into Megaopolis a couple issues ago, Rotor, Uncle Chuck, Tommy, Tails, and Snively (plus apparently Fiona, for some reason) have all been hard at work studying and trying to understand the nanites. They try blasting them with a ton of electricity, but when that elicits no response from the nanites Tommy worriedly thinks Snively killed them with the zap, though Snively corrects him that biologically speaking, they're not really "alive," nor is anything that Eggman makes. While you may be technically correct from a scientific standpoint, Snively, I think Nicole might have a thing or two to say about your assertion that machines can't be alive…

Well! It seems Tommy was also unconvinced by Snively's words, and his tear splashing down into the nanite goo triggers some kind of reaction, prompting them to rapidly spread out and reach tendrils of themselves towards him. He's understandably a little freaked out and retreats into his shell, but the nanites don't hurt him as they make contact with the shell - in fact, the sensation is ticklish and causes him to start giggling uncontrollably, which must make for a very weird sight as Uncle Chuck reenters the room to investigate the noise. Tommy assures him that he's all right - and then from out of nowhere, his shell sprouts a pair of goddamn wings, because why the hell not?

I initially took issue with this concept due to it being established canon that the nanites can only absorb and reshape non-living matter, whereas turtle shells are definitely living matter, being full of nerve endings and basically being formed from repurposed bone matter from the turtle's ribs and pelvis. However, the above dialogue seems to indicate that they were able to fuse with Tommy's shell anyway by connecting straight into his nervous system. I would guess that after Sonic introduced the nanites to the concept of organic and synthetic coexistence a couple issues ago, they were just waiting for the chance to "study" an organic specimen in their own weird way, and Tommy just happened to end up as their test subject.  Chuck and Tommy call everyone else in, where he notes that the nanites seem to react to his thoughts without said thoughts actually controlling the nanites directly. He demonstrates this by thinking vaguely that he wants to go somewhere, prompting a pair of jetpack engines to sprout from his shell and ignite, carrying him straight out of the lab and into the sky above Knothole. The others watch with an odd mixture of bemusement and amusement as the nanites fly Tommy's body in a pattern, using contrails to write "We're just going for a test drive" in the air. Well Tommy, looks like you have a really cool and unique new ability! It'd certainly be interesting to be fused with self-replicating nanomachines that react to your thoughts and wishes by morphing themselves in ways to grant those wishes, especially when they seem to actively like their host.

[thenonbinarydetective]

MID Overview/Review

Ok so I redid it because tumblr broke the first one. Luckily, it gave me the oppurtunity to fix some of my grammar/spelling mistakes.

It’s actually even longer than before.

I’m thorough what can I say?

besides please read this it took a while.

·         On the menu’s Extra Section there’s a trailer for Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase (2019). A movie that came out way before this game which is kinda funny

·         The movement is a little janky, to put it in professional terms, it’s a little fast and jumpy. It took a bit to get used to the navigation.

·         The problem with the movement really jumps out in the end in the tunnels. I could barely get my cursor around the Hardy Boys or even Mei.

·         Also in the tunnels, if I went slightly off trail the game would FREAK out. I wanted to look around the tunnels and maybe get a bad end but our Sleuths but I couldn’t look around without being yelled at.

·         This happens in other mini games and puzzles, whenever you mess up the characters make a snarky remark in your direction. Every. Single. Time. It would be funnier if it was only on a few occasions but it was every time I “messed up”.

·         The graphics were obviously terrible. They also were variable…Somethings looked kinda okay and somethings looked awful. Like the quality changed from time to time. Sometimes even in the same frames. Frank, graphically, looks better than some of the other characters. When he and Joe stood next to each other, they almost looked like they didn’t belong in the same game. This goes for some of the other characters too.

·         I don’t get why Frank was always in that pose? Everyone else stood awkwardly but admittedly it was a bit more normal. They stood with their hands towards their hips like how people typically do. Although there was a few times where people just grabbed their wrists for no reason.

·         As someone who loves mythology and folklore (and pretty much anything that can be tied to into those) it was really cool to see the Malleus Maleficarum or The Hammer of Witches in the game. I wish it actually had more use in the game and maybe helped in some way. I know the book did some terrible things but it is an interesting read. As I do own a copy of it.

·         Also my birthdate was used on the puzzle. Which was cool. It’s fun to be born on special dates. Except my birthday isn’t part of the solution but that’s okay.

·         There’s a couple times where Nancy(and Frank) starts talking about clues or reading things out loud before I got the chance to look at them which was super annoying.

·         The game crashed multiple times while playing

·         The closer look at the clues was nice but was only okayish for me. It didn’t always work that well. Besides I’ve seen other games with the same function that worked smoother.

·         I’m not a big fan of the new chat format. I prefer the old way. In this new format a lot of the dialogue options were getting cut off or the option didn’t fully describe what Nancy was going to say so I didn’t know what I was choosing.

·         The text boxes were a bit buggy and there were times I couldn’t click on some of the dialogue options.

·         The cutscenes were slow and the game had WAY too much talking. There was more talking than gameplay. The game was honestly just walking and talking

·         I liked the text messages, they were fun and cute but they didn’t add much to the gameplay

·         Lots of objects were clipping into each other

·         Loading screens were always glitch

·         The audio was off a lot of times. There were times when I could barely hear the characters over the background music or ambience sound. In Austria, I called Ned and Carson and I wouldn’t have even known they were speaking if not for the subtitles. Even after lowering the music and ambience sounds specifically and I still had this issue.

·         Also Ned’s voicemail has changed. Did he make up with his sister?

·         There were a lot of spelling and grammar mistakes. Almost every other written thing (books, pamphlets, and notes) had some kind of mistake. Hotchkiss’ book is one example.

·         There were times when the pop-up text box was harder to read than the written thing. Not all the paragraphs were spaced out far enough in the boxes but were fine on the written thing.

·         No “Can’t check that off yet.” The Checklist was unusable by the player. Unlike every other game. It did it automatically which wasn’t fun. I liked using the checklist.

·         The game was so linear that I couldn’t really look around or do my own thing. When one thing was down you were immediately shuffled to the next thing. It basically made the checklist unnecessary.

·         Terrible Animation. People moved for no reason. Just stuck in the same cyclical animation over and over and over again. They were pretty janky and awkward. Joe was the worst for me, he was constantly twitching on the screen. Frank was stock-still in comparison. No one else was that bad.

·         Many of the mouth movements did not remotely match what the characters were saying. Sometimes nonexistent.

·         Everyone’s EYES ARE SO WIDE. IT’S LIKE THEY DON’T HAVE EYELIDS. THEY’RE SO OPEN.

·         The Parry’s curtains glitch in the sink. There’s a few plants that look weird, they had a neon glow on them. Olivia’s hands are always clipping through her robe and hair. In Moosham Castle there is a thing that’s inside a table. Both the Hardy Boys’ feet (and maybe other characters) were entirely in the ground at times. There were plenty of other problems like that.

·         If I looked around a certain way while everyone’s talking at the Parry kitchen table Frank’s entire body disappears with the exception of his neck and watch.

·         Some of the windows had a view of the town outside but other windows have this shine that you can’t see through.

·         I’m not thrilled about the bystanders. Only the protest guy really helped. Over all they didn’t add to the game or help me at all.

·         Dr. Hirst’s silhouette was kinda weird

·         Also why did the game start in Austria??? That’s just weird? I thought we were just gonna start with Deirdre calling us but whatever

·         I really hate the needless and honestly misplaced drama. Why couldn’t we talk to Ned and why haven’t we talked to Ned. It really pissed me off. Why would you put this directly after Ned’s whole “I Love and Support- This Could Basically Be a Proposal” Speech in Sea of Darkness? It’s just super off

·         Not to mention the fact that the “Francy” moments in this game felt super forced. I don’t like what it does to their characters too. It feels like Ned isn’t trusting Nancy, which is crazy because he trusts her with his life. Frank is the more awkward Hardy Brother but that was ramped all the way up. Also Nancy completely ignoring Ned? What? They don’t feel like themselves here. It’s just off. This tone should’ve been brought in so soon, chronologically, after SEA. It’s out of place.

·         Who was the female voice that was in the phone call with Ned? That was never answered. Was that a drama plot that was unfinished? Why not take it out of the game if you’re never going to resolve it? Why start an unnecessary relationship drama that’s both half-assed and unfinished?

·         It’s kinda weird how in the end Nancy leaves the Parry house and calls Ned and we can hear her side of the conversation but not his. She’s just talking to herself.

·         The phone friends were basically useless. If it wasn’t for the flashlight and the checklist I would say that Nancy didn’t even need her phone. And I guess talking to Damian Faulkner. 95% of the calls I made just went to voicemail. I want to chat about the case, talk to my friends, and get hints like we used to. I didn’t even know we could call Dr.Hirst about the ergot poisoning. I only found out on accident. I don’t know how many conversations I missed. Calling people used to feel important but here it doesn’t even need to be in the game it’s so useless.

·         Just because this bugs me I don’t like the Hardy Boys starting their own detective agency. They began their work by working for their Dad. Who is a private investigator/private detective. Who runs a Detective Agency. Why would they start their own?? If you’re gonna make this a family business why not make it a family business? Right?

·         May February, 1692 was an actual date they used. I think it was supposed to be February and they changed it to May. Earlier in the same note they used May so I’m guessing they didn’t properly finish the rest of the note.

·         The lockpick game was visually glitch for me and the game itself didn’t work that great for me

·         Joe’s hair makes him look like a fake blond lol. There are parts of his head (by the nape of his neck for example) that have brown hairs. Also some parts of his hair didn’t load properly on occasion and underneath was brown. Did he dye it?

·         Which brings me to my next point. The hair was animated horribly. Frank and any of the other short and simple haired characters were okay. But probably only because they had short and simple hair. The longer haired characters were not as well animated.

·         I randomly got double the Johnny Cakes when I made them. So Teegan and Olivia got extra.

·         I will admit that making the Johnny cakes wasn’t the worst cooking minigame we’ve had in the games before.

·         Frank getting the Frankenstein ones were a little obvious. It also didn’t feel as personal as the other ones oddly enough. We had a fun little dialogue about the design with everyone but Frank. He just got some cringey “I’ll eat these right away” kind of dialogue.

·         I wish the truth serum was actually useful. Solving Tituba’s poem and going a bit out of the way to get the ingredients led me to believe it would be used for more than some “fun” dialogue choices. Joe and Deirdre are the only ones to use it. Which leads to some cute moments in which Deirdre admits she actually kinda likes and admires Nancy. I love her. Joe says he always tells the truth (no) so he doesn’t know how to tell if it works. I love him.

·         Maybe it’s just me or the audio was off but Carson sounded different in Austria than he did in Salem.

·         The use of the ergot poisoning was kinda of awesome. It’s one of the most popular theories on why Salem went bonkers and it was interesting to see it used to trick our favorite sleuths.

·         The note to save Deirdre didn’t appear when I clicked on it. Frank (and I think Joe) reacted to it but it didn’t let me examine it. The bug fixed itself by closing the examination and clicking on it again.

·         I love how the “ghosts” were handled. Especially them being hallucinations. My favorite was in the cemetery with the Hardy Boys and Olivia. The screen got kinda weird and everyone started to get worked up and really tense. They started fighting and you could see Abigail before they did. The build up to it was fantastic. The other scenes were cool too.

·         The tunnels where the “ghosts” jumped out at every wrong (and sometimes right) turns while you’re desperately trying to escape the tunnels with Mei was pretty awesome. One of the jumpscares even got me.

·         THERE WAS NO ENDING LETTER. She wrote a letter to Ned in the beginning but she never wrote a second one. Sure we sorta got to see how everything turned out at the party but it’s not the same. It doesn’t feel properly ended.

·         I lowkey ship Jason and Mei. I could totally picture the two of them making out in those hidden tunnel rooms beneath Salem. Not just because I would too. This easily could’ve been another unfulfilled romance sideplot.

·         Some of the books/notes really didn’t feel that helpful. I did learn some new things about Salem but I don’t feel we used the knowledge we gained properly in the game.

·         The Jack O Lanterns were fun.

·         The parallels between the Judges of the Witch Trials and Judge Danforth was a pretty interesting plot point. There definitely is a difference between accusing witches and accusing someone of arson when they were 9.

·         Teegan’s guilt for both the shed and Hathorne house was something I didn’t really expect. It was a good plot twist. I can see how it was hinted earlier on by Lauren who says “Teegan likes to protect what’s important to her, sometimes that’s Mei.” Sometimes being the key word.

·         The Hardy Boys being home-made ghost hunters was hysterical and adorable. I want them to have their own games soooo badly.

·         I am completely on Joe’s side that we can’t prove that ghosts don’t exists, even if we can’t prove they do exist.

·         I knew Alicia was the bad guy the second she started shit-talking Ned without knowing him. Only bad people don’t like Ned. He would never force Nancy to become a housewife, that’s not who she is and he loves her for who she is.

·         I did “OK Boomer” Judge Danforth. He deserved it.

·         I loved the little tidbits that we got of Frances’ and Lauren’s relationship we got to hear about. It’s really sweet.

·         The comparison of Jason being a fast food cheeseburger with extra extra extra cheese and Ned being a home-cooked meal is perfect. Home-cooked meal is a great way to describe Ned.

·         Either way they’re both snacks.

·         Ok Jason’s ugly in these graphics but it was implied he was supposed to be hot.

·         Jason could’ve been a true himbo but unfortunately he wasn’t

·         TBH Ned, Carson, and Damian were the most attractive characters in the game. Only because they weren’t subjected to these graphics.

·         I loved the Ghost Wavelength Spectral Analyzer 2.5 the Joe Hardy Guide to Amazing Finds but I hate the spectral analyzer itself. That mini-game was the WORST. It took forever!

·         Alicia was straight up just gonna kill everyone. I’m doubting her biology knowledge.

·         Also if you wanna raise kids in a more “modern” environment just freaking move. I know there was money in that real estate deal but there’s real estate in other towns.

·         I love Deirdre. She’s really funny and kinda sweet. Even though she likes Ned (and maybe Nancy too lol) she doesn’t try to break them up or get between them. At least not anymore. She knows how much Ned loves Nancy. She even gave Nancy relationship advice. Which Nancy desperately needs because she terrible at this.

·         This is just me but I kinda wish Nancy had an original idea for their vacation instead of just going back to Austria. Maybe let Ned pick this time because he’s the one who has to play catch up all the time and it’s only fair.

·         Carson’s an adorable dorky dad and the only rich white man I trust. I’ve said it in my tweets and I will say it until I die. No one can take that away from me.

·         This may be repetitive but I don’t like what this game did to Ned, Frank, and I guess even Nancy too. Ned knows about Frank’s feelings for Nancy. And now needless, useless, meaningless drama is gonna happen. I hate it I hate it I HATE IT!

·         Just the relationship drama didn’t add a thing to this game. It was stupid. Especially because it was unfinished. It should’ve just been taken out.

·         Joe looks 13 and way to skinny. He’s the brawn to Frank’s brain. Yes, he’s smart too and Frank isn’t weak. However, Joe is way stronger than him. If there has to be a scrawnier Hardy Boy, it’s Frank and we all know it.

·         To quote Joe he’s got Man Strength™.

·         Cause “Boy” is only part of the title, but Hardy Men doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

·         At times it feels like that the creators forget that Joe’s supposed to be smart too. There were times where it felt like they made him a total idiot. Though that could be personal too.

·         Frank being a total Captain Obvious, perfect.

·         They’re both puppies that got turned into human boys. Frank is just a calmer puppy

·         Love that Mei’s going to Waverly but some of the other references fell flat. The Cat thing and the “I only smoke when I’m on fire” thing. It’s just not the same.

·         Jason deserves the Not-As-Much-of-a-Jerk-as-You-Could-Have-Been Award.

·         Mei’s a sweetie when she finally lets you in.

·         The multiple endings seemed to have changed from different culprits to just what happens to Hathorne House and/or Teegan (I think). They seem to be pretty much the same. I did expect that as that has often been my experience with “multiple endings” games.

·         I’m glad that both the Accused Witches and Lauren can get the house. It seems right for that to happen.

·         Olivia’s pretty funny. I have a thing for eccentric characters. And it was funny how she tried to induct us into the coven at the end.

·         The red/ginger hair superstition is a real superstition and I’m glad it was used. It’s for witches, werewolves, and vampires. Not just that gingers have no souls. (from the Malleus Maleficarum)

·         If there is another game, I hope it’s the Nedcy vacation. And that we actually get to see Ned lol. I don’t get why he has never made an in-game appearance. It’s a little unfair at this point.

·         Considering Emerson College is 39 minutes away from Salem and we still didn’t get him, I doubt it. Even though they mentioned both Salem and kidnapping Ned in Labyrinth of Lies.

·         Also that the next one feels more like a Nancy Drew game.

·         There’s no puzzles and there’s so much changed that it doesn’t have the same feel to it.

·         This doesn’t feel like it took 4 ½ years to make. It feels like it took less than ½ a year. I can tell that things have changed because pretty much all the people who worked on it originally got fired. And that the Austrian game development company that took over everything (besides licensing) struggled to match the quality of the previous games.

·         It definitely wasn’t beta-tested or was barely beta-tested. Quite a few beta-testers have come forward to say they didn’t get the offer to beta-test until September of this year. A month before preorder. Yikes.

·         I know I got a little mean for some of the points but coddling the company by just saying positive things doesn’t help. They’ll get comfortable and give the fans worse things than this. I’m not an expert but I’ve played and learned enough games that I know some basics about how they’re made. It’s not easy but that doesn’t mean we should excuse things because of it.

·         There’s been a lot of controversy with HER and Penny and this game and probably more. I’m not gonna get more into that besides mentioning that things changed because of this and not for the better.

·         I probably missed somethings but whatever this is over 3000 words. I covered the basics and then some.

·         This game is just a 2.5/5 for me

[joshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh]

Since I’ve been playing the game as long as I have I should probably like, share some of my thoughts on it.

I think when I’m playing Hollow Realization, I’m having fun. Combat is so fast and flashy, especially now that I’ve got dual wielding, and enemies are such cakewalks, that it’s just a fairly enjoyable time wrecking shit. I really feel like Kirito in Aincrad, absolutely wrecking shit, destroying everything that comes my way, claiming every pussy in sight. In that sense the game is very immersive and accurate to the SAO experience. But then my biggest problem with the game ends up being one major thing.

Dissonance.

I do not give a single fuck about anything in this game. I fucked the girls so I could say I fucked them and have a haha funny image collection in my captures, but I didn’t actually enjoy a single step of it. In fact, being in town in general is a horrible experience, every moment I’m not engaged in combat is a moment where I’d rather be engaged in combat, and I fucking hate being stopped dead in my tracks of area progression since apparently Kirito has commitments and has to go back to town so we can watch more shitty VN cutscenes. Not helping is the cringy as shit localization that fucking hurts to read sometimes because you can just tell they were trying to make it funnier than whatever the Japanese script was, and they failed horribly. And then where that dissonance comes in is in what everyone’s talking about - Kirito and all of his squad, they take everything so fucking seriously. Any time we’re approaching an area boss or some rando enemy attacks us I have to be told that we need to prep or this should be a tough fight, it’s all built up to be this major big deal. But I can literally end it all in seconds. And then there’s the constant talk about all the fucking #NPCLivesMatter and I do not give a fuck, I like Premiere because she’s moe but that’s it. And don’t get me started on Genesis, holy shit, everyone fucking awwing and coming because he solos monsters on his own (something I can do just fine) and people getting pissed when he steals kills from weak parties, which is also something I do all the fucking time in this game because all the fake gamers take like 9 years to kill level 10 enemies so why should I not swoop in and fucking curbstomp the entire competition. I am Kirito, but I am Genesis, but Kirito and Genesis hate each other. The gameplay and narrative could not feel further apart. There’s also the extended VN cutscenes not directly tied to the main story where you get taken on a quest you don’t actually get to participate in since it’s just a fucking cutscene so they play the one action song, have Kirito go “hargh!” and play some monster sounds and it’s lame as shit. I think your gameplay’s decently fun game, let me experience that instead! Ngl I’ve been skipping basically every single scene that’s not the main plot stuff since I want them gone from my events list and I don’t want to spend like an hour every play session just reading dialogue about how, oh, Philia and Leafa went fucking fishing. God.

I might have more to say about this were it not 3 in the morning again. Point is gameplay kinda fun, everything else real bad and dissonant.

[crappyfics]

Grey Squirrel

gif by @bloomingyouths

Part 1

Summary: The theatre students are putting on a show. When professor and director Hanz casts Y/N and Yixing to protagonize the play, they understand how theatre, as well as life, is all about love and passion.

Genre: Fluff, angst, comedy // Word count: 7k

Warning: some of the vocabulary is peculiar to theatre; not read-proof. 

Act 1, Scene 1

The circle of chairs seemed to tie the room together. The director was discussing something with the stage manager and the cast waited for them to take their seats in the circle. You skimmed through the script, drank some water, and kicked Yixing’s feet as a form of amusement. He sat next to you and kicked back when you were murmuring your lines for only yourself to hear. He smiled when you messed up, he giggled when you restarted. 

“Do you already know your lines?” you asked him as soon as you closed your script and placed it under your chair. Yixing nodded in response and his cheeky smile was a bit too confident making you giggle. “We’ll see.”

“Wanna grab a coffee later?” he crossed his legs trying to relax a bit more on his chair. His proposition came a little unexpected to you. 

“So you’re not hanging out with blondie tonight?” you teased making the boy blush and a little too ashamedly turn his face away. It was so obvious how much that new friend of his had affected him. Yixing was not one to hide emotions, he was rather so transparent. Maybe because you knew him too well it was easier for you to detect his feelings but it never failed to impress you how cute he looked whenever his heart craved for someone. 

“She’s busy tonight,” he responded and earned a smack on the arm from you. 

“Am I just a second option to you?” your fake anger is funnier than it should be and he laughs with each smack you give him. “I don’t know what to do with you anymore, Yixing.” 

Before he can defend himself, Kyungsoo finally sat down beside Jongin. Unlike the expected, the director left the room leaving the stage manager in charge of the cast’s activity for the first half of the rehearsal. Kyungsoo didn’t take too long to open his own script on Act 1, Scene 1 and start speaking. 

“I hope you’re all off book for the first act. I decided we should do an Italian* instead of a simple runthrough. You guys know how it goes, I don’t think I have to explain.” he spoke and his serious look sometimes made shivers run down your spine. Kyungsoo was often serious when you saw him because it was almost always during rehearsals. Sometimes, when you had classes together, you would notice how joyful he could be around other people. But when it came to this project, he was always stressed and managing problems here and there, so it was hard for you to see him relaxed if it wasn’t for Baekhyun to make him crack a smile.“Remember: be loud and enunciate. If you can’t remember a line say “line” and I’ll feed you.”

He started the stopwatch and read the first stage directions to get the actors prepared, and soon enough Jongin opened the play with his quite comical monologue. He spoke fast yet he pronounced the words very well never forgetting to make himself clear. He sat across from you and he used it as a chance to make of you his audience, delivering his lines to you who watched attentively. Soon after, Lea delivered her lines finally starting the first dialogue of the show. Yixing decided to rest his head on your shoulder and he closed his eyes as he listened to the play happening around him, there was just the voice of the cast members and the eventual pencil noises Kyungsoo would make when writing notes down. Your mind thought of Yixing, he seemed tired, he wasn’t resting as much, and now with tutoring Mia, he was always very busy. But he was happy which made you happy as well, just a bit worried he wasn’t giving himself a break. You worried not because he needed someone to watch him, but because there was no one else for you to take care of. It was almost as if you needed Yixing not just for he was your good friend, but also because your instincts urged to care for others. You closed your eyes as well and tried to stay focused on the play because your entrance was next and you didn’t wanna mess it up. 

“It doesn’t matter anymore, Julia, for I have already made up my mind,” you said in response to your scene partner. Your eyes still closed, you were cozy as you felt Yixing’s hair tickling the skin of your neck. “I’m leaving tomorrow.”

“Don’t be reckless, you ought to stay!” she fired back as quick as the Italian permitted her to speak. You both paid close attention to the movement of your lips being careful to pronounce every word. You opened your eyes and almost instinctively they darted to Kyungsoo who looked down at his script on his lap too concentrated to look up and miss a part.

“I can’t stay here and watch him forget me. I gotta flee somewhere where I can forget him first, and come back only when Lay has been erased from my memory,”  you delivered.

The Italian kept going and everyone seemed to know their lines as Kyungsoo hopefully expected. Most of the play your scene partner was Yixing and the boy seemed to be napping against your shoulder but impressively enough he would always speak up when it was his turn. And the first half of the rehearsal went smoothly. The next three hours were dedicated to blocking the last scene of the first act and the first two scenes of the second act. You were already exhausted by the time the director gave his final notes. When you were all dismissed, you were quick to put your shoes on and leave the studio with Yixing fast behind. 

You went to the cafe around campus thinking you were too tired to go anywhere further. It was still four in the afternoon but you felt like you could already have some dinner. You order a coffee and a muffin then sat down once you got them in hands. Yixing sat across from you holding his own cup to his lips. 

“It’s nice to finally hang out with you again after what? Five weeks?” you teased him again bringing back the topic from earlier. He giggled before turning to speak. 

“Ah, don’t be like that,” he whined. “And you know I’ve been busy.” you nodded in response.

“Too busy, I must say.” you took another sip of your drink and placed it down on the table. “But I gotta give credit to you, you’ve been very disciplined with the play regardless of your tutoring and all.”

It’s not very clear how that happened, but Yixing ended up tutoring one of the language students twice a week. It was one of those blurry things that happen in life, you don’t really know how it started and it feels like it’s been there since forever. Your friend was suddenly so engaged in tutoring, and then in spending time with the girl, and all of a sudden he was so obvious about his feelings for her. It warmed your heart to see him that way, though, on the other hand, you were yet to meet the girl that made his heart flutter. Mia, that was her name. He would mention her every once in a while trying not to be too annoying about it around you, but you didn’t mind, you wanted him to share, you wanted to know about her just as much as he was interested in her. It was how you felt things should be.

“She might come visit us next rehearsal,” he said hiding the shy smile behind the cup.

“Oh, great! I get to finally meet her,” you respond as excited as you allowed yourself to be even if you lacked energy after the tiring rehearsal. He smiled back thinking to himself that it was nice how supportive you were. It wasn’t like he planned anything though, he was too shy to make a move just yet. He was living for the “beating around the bush” type of thing because he couldn’t find in himself the courage to take his friendship with Mia to the next level. “Yixing told me so much about you,” you spoke as if rehearsing exactly what to say to her. 

“Ah, please don’t say that!” he protested but it was already too late, you were ready to tease your friend at least just a bit. “Don’t embarrass me.”

“Don’t worry, Xing, you know I wouldn’t.”

“Yes, you would!”

About an hour later, you found yourself back home. Your roommate greeted you as she left the apartment saying she was gonna sleep at her boyfriend’s. Being alone at home was always very pleasant, you liked the silence only the emptiness could provide. You ran to the bathroom, eager to take a shower and relax a bit before you could find in yourself the energy to cook something for dinner. Shower thoughts took up your mind for the entire time.  

Act 1, Scene 2

Jongdae was very delicate with each one of the cast members. He was taking a few more measurements he needed for the making of the costumes. He had some of the costume pieces already available to try, but he was scared people were gonna ruin them so he was taking his sweet time with each one of the actors and making sure they were as delicate with the piece as he was. He measured Lea’s hips another time to make sure her skirt was gonna fit comfortably and you were up next for measurement. You waited by the table in the corner where you had your script, a pen and a highlighter and you worked through each page marking beats and adding notes. 

“Are you busy?” Pam pulled the chair beside you and sat down in hopes you would give her full attention. You pushed your script aside and turned to her waving your head in response. She smiled thankfully. “Good, so we can discuss hair and makeup.” she continues, “We debated for sometime, and we might need to give you a haircut.” 

You looked at her thinking she was just joking but the way she dragged her gaze to your long hair and touched it as if already planning a cut, you knew she wasn’t. It didn’t bother you to have to change radically, you knew it was gonna happen sooner than later given that you were practically a doll directors would play with by changing the appearance whenever it fit. You could just wear a wig and make it would do, but knowing Hanz, the director, he would lecture your for a good hour just to convince you to chop off your locks. 

“Who debated about it?” you asked pulling your hair from your shoulder to fall on your back. You watched her attentive but your mind thought that maybe that was a great idea after all. 

“You know, Hanz, Soo, Jongdae and I,” she moved her hands as she spoke giving her an extra feminine appearance. It was charming at the same time it could be a little distracting. 

“I see. I guess since all of you agreed to that, I guess I ought to.” with a smile, she got up from her seat and left you behind. But you didn’t have time to go back to your notes because two seconds after, Jongdae called out your name for you to go see him and the costume pieces he held up. 

He handed you the dress you were gonna wear for the first half of the show. There weren’t many costumes changes for you this time, which was great. You remember how difficult it was to play four characters and change costumes about ten times in one show. You were glad your character this time was designated to wear a flower dress and cute white shoes that matched. You started peeling off your clothes getting rid of the top first and putting the dress from your head. Once it fell around you, you pulled down the jeans and so it started feeling like show time, when everyone changed in the wings of the scene and there was no space for shyness when you saw so many people half naked and hurriedly changed into their costumes. You smiled to yourself thinking that at this point nothing could embarrass you anymore. 

Jongdae closed the zipper for you and smoothed down the skirt to see how it graciously fell on your sides. You could hear some polite wow’s coming from all sides of the studio but not being able to pinpoint who was looking at you. You were too busy looking down at the very detailed top and cleavage of the dress. Jongdae stepped closer to the table to put a check mark on the sheet he had open on his computer. Your dress was perfect and everyone acknowledged that, even eyes that you thought never really looked at you. You turned around loving how the skirt flew up with the motion. 

“It’s perfect for you, Y/N,” you heard the comment come from Kyungsoo as he approached with a kind smile. His cheeks were tinted red and his smile soon disappeared too shy to stay to long. He stopped in front of you and admired the striped that held the piece to your shoulders. “Good job, Jongdae.” He cleared his throat and blinked a few times as if it could help him remember exactly what he was supposed to do. 

“Yeah, Y/N, you look gorgeous,” said Yixing coming to you too and his smile was nothing timid. He placed a hand on your upper back and gave you a kiss on the cheek. It wasn’t weird, it was just unusual. He seemed… extra happy. It wasn’t about you, you knew, but his comment was very welcome anyway. You turned back to face Kyungsoo but the boy now wasn’t watching you anymore. Before you could say anything, or anyone for that matter, he walked away before Yixing caused him even more jealousy. 

“Okay, Y/N, now try this one,” Jongdae asked handing you another costume. And for the next five minutes he worked on taking notes and a few pictures so he could visualize exactly what he needed to fix. 

When you changed back to your normal attire, the director gave everyone a twenty-minute break before you started the rehearsals. You had a snack in your bag so you didn’t see the need to run to the cafeteria as Jongin did all so clumsily. You found a spot outside the studio and sat beside Yixing who ate nothing but eyed your food hungrily. 

“Do you want a bite?” you lifted your fork offering the food. He just opened his mouth and let you feed him like a child. “Where’s your food?”

“I asked Jongin to buy it,” he responded with a mouthful of food. 

“And where’s the first lady?” your tone of joke was edging a mockery you weren’t sure Yixing would understand. “I’m curious to meet her.” but he sighed heavily almost depressing. 

“She cancelled,” he said. “But it’s okay, you know? She can come another time.” You didn’t give it much thought and finished your food sharing it with Yixing a few bites because he was just so hungry. By the time Jongin came back, the boy only had three minutes to finish his food and go back to the studio. You reentered the space feeling brand new and ready to warm up with the group. 

Act 2, Scene 1

The wing blew on your neck and you liked the spring breeze that gave you chills. It was a new feeling it so close to your skin now that your hair was shorter and exposed you in a different way now. You walked down the street heading to the theatre department of campus and walking through the corridors of the building and without much thought knowing where you were headed meant that this place was already your natural habitat.  You pushed the door open just to find everyone already in a circle just waiting for Baekhyun to start the warm-up. Despite all the eyes following you and comments flying from across the room, you quietly walked to the far wall of the studio and carefully dropped your bag there, then took off your shoes and out of habit reached for you hair to tie it in a ponytail. The strands were now too short to be tied up so you let it down allowing it to frame your face ever so delicately. You then approached the group.

“That’s a new look I see,” says Lea admiring how different you look without all the hair you used to have. “It suits you well, Y/N.” you respond with a simple thanks not really knowing yet how you feel about it. It was a new you without a new attitude, it felt strange. Not bad, just strange. 

“That’s exactly what I was thinking about. I think Pam did a great job.” said Hanz moving closer and playing with your hair then placing his hands on your shoulder in an act of support. “Remind me to thank her later. Now, let’s warmup!” he yelled and it was Baekhyun’s cue to leave whatever he was doing and start the exercises with the cast. 

After warming up your body, you warmed up your face muscles, and finally your vocal chords. You felt relaxed and ready to go. Part of you felt as if the new haircut should give you not only a new attitude as yourself, but also as Mona, the fierce character you were cast to play. So you tried to use it, the strangeness that resided in your gut could be of good use. So when the director announced that you were going to rehearse one of the most dramatic scenes with Lay, Yixing’s character, you thought that it was the right moment to try a new approach with Mona. 

You got to your blocking and Yixing to his, both of you still holding your scripts because the lines were still in the process of memorization. You were quite confident with a few parts and so was Yixing, but the aid of the script was still very much needed. And when the director gave you permission, you started. You crossed the stage area with determination knowing exactly what you were doing yet it was quite improvised for not all the blocking was still set on stone. 

It was incredible how Yixing also just went with the flow, you both owned the stage marvelously. It was easy to play with him because he knew you, because you both had touch with each other, things other people didn’t have. They could have cast two other great actors to play your roles, but they chose you because you had what others would take years to achieve. It was obvious to everyone, you were the perfect stage match. 

“Okay, that was great,” said Hanz getting up from his chair and circling the table to get closer to both of you. “I really like how you measure your distance from each other, but make sure to angle it. We need to see more of your faces. Give it to the audience.” Kyungsoo took notes as Hanz spoke and nodded with every new addition. 

“I also think it was great,” said Kyungsoo now getting everyone’s attention. You watched him almost as enchanted as he watched you perform. “But I think, I don’t know if you’ll agree,” he motioned to Hanz, “you could speak a little slower. Enjoy the pauses between each line.”

He was delicate when he spoke, he rarely gesticulated but when he asked you to be slower he made a languid motion with his hands as if your voces were to be as slow. Hanz nodded in agreement finding Kyungsoo’s point very welcome and important. He then went back to the table but didn’t sit down, he was standing still watching you retake your positions and do the scene another time. Kyungsoo put down his pen, and instead of watching his script, he solely watched you. 

You liked when he watched you, you enjoyed his attention. It made you love theatre even more because it gave you the chance to be centre of Kyungsoo’s attention even if for just a scene. When you weren’t playing, it felt like you were not interesting anymore and not deserving of his gaze. Kyungsoo noticed how your hair gave you a new angle, it gave you another thing to incorporate into your character and it seemed to work perfectly. He liked your new look, he thought it suited you very well. But it was easy for him to think that because he liked you anyway. 

He watched you perform the scene and after each line, each step forward, he felt the chemistry you and Yixing had. His heart shrank, whether was for the scene or for himself, he couldn’t know. He saw the way you lost yourself in the scene and the way you worked so well with you friend, he wasn’t blind to all that. He knew the chemistry he could feel it, he envied it. But he settled for having your eyes on him when he gave you feedback. Whenever he spoke, he liked it when you paid close attention to his words and memorized everything he said. He wished your attention was his whenever he wanted, outside the studio, inside his room, in front of everybody or just when there was the two of you. 

“The chemistry is great. You’re doing so well! I want to see that same energy on the opening night! Keep the good job, everyone.” he clapped in reverence and then walked back to his seat and started discussing with Kyungsoo other notes they should take for that exact same scene. You and Yixing left the stage area for Junmyeon and Minseok to rehearse their scene and end the second act. 

Act 2, Scene 2

The bar was full but it was pleasant. Yixing was dancing deciding that drinking was not actually his kind of fun. On the other hand, you were by the table talking to Baekhyun who reluctantly went out that night and would fall asleep any minute if you didn’t keep him awake. Lea and Jongin, just like their characters in the play, fought over something remotely relevant which gave you and Baekhyun more content to talk about. You saw Yixing approach the table to take a sip from your beer just to retort his face in reaction to the bitterness. 

“Let’s go,” he said once he put the glass down. You weren’t sure what he was talking about until he stretched his arm to you and with his head he motioned to the dancefloor. 

“No, no. This is not for me,” you said sitting straight on the chair. “I’m taking care of Baekhyun here.” 

“Why did he even come if he’s only gonna fall asleep?” your friend asked crossing his arms waiting for an answer. You waved your head not really knowing why he came either. He said he was trying to force himself to have some fun rather than just work his ass off for school and the play. But turns out he was only exhausting himself even more. 

“Should I take you home?” You asked him who was blinking slowly almost closing his eyes. It was amazing how he could manage to doze off even when the place was really loud. He didn’t respond, instead, he took a sip from his drink and got up to go dance with Yixing leaving you no choice but to join them. Out of habit, you tried to flip your hair behind your back but it was useless, the short strand didn’t go that far only making you a bit anxious for yet not having forgotten the simple habit. 

You were a terrible dancer which made you avoid the dancefloor. But once in a while it couldn’t hurt, right? So you let yourself enjoy the music and move your body the way it felt right. Sometime you let Yixing dictate the moves when he would get closer and place a hand on your hips so you could actually let loose. He laughed with you clumsy ways but praised you for your braveness anyway. Baekhyun seemed to get more energetic and his moves were dragging some of the attention around. He noticed that and realised that he couldn’t stop now, he had to give a show. You forgot about him as you danced with your friend ruining his every move because you simply didn’t have the talent for it, and you didn’t notice when suddenly people circled Baekhyun. He easily stole the scene. 

“I need a break,” you practically yelled but Yixing didn’t hear. You repeated once again but this time close to his ear and when he nodded you left him behind going to the table and sitting down to finish your beer that now wasn’t as cold anymore. 

“You shouldn’t be allowed there,” said Jongin laughing at you. “Your sick moves are not beautiful to see.”

He mocked you and you let him have his fun. It was okay, you knew you weren’t born a ballerina. You talked for a while with them until you looked at the time and saw it was already very late and you should go. Almost as if he could read your mind, Yixing came over to the table opening one button of his feeling too hot for this place. He announced it was getting late and that you both should wake up early the next morning for a 9am class. You nodded in response and took your bag from the chair beside you. You looked back at Baekhyun and debated if you should drag him out of the dancefloor or not, 

“I’ll handle him,” said Jongin raising his glass and smirking all so charming. By the look on Lea’s face, you knew her heart fluttered in her chest. “Goodnight, Y/N.”

Act 2, Scene 3

Yixing walked through the door a bit more moody than usual. He took his seat next to you and without a word sunk in his chair as if you wouldn’t notice his strange behaviour. If you didn’t know his drinking habit, you might have guessed he was hungover from last night. But it wasn’t the case, he was moody for another reason, one that you yet had to find out. 

“Is everything okay?” you asked as you pulled out your book from you backpack and your pencil case. He didn’t raise his head to look at you but neither did you focus your attention solely on him. 

“It’s Mia,” he sighed. 

“Of course it is” you rolled your eyes with a fake annoyance. You told him many times to quit the melodrama and finally tell her how he felt, but when whined back in response you couldn help but feel like you too were too shy to make such a bold move. “What happened with her this time?”

“She ignored me in the hallway,” he whined. 

“I’m sure she just didn’t see you, Xing,” you responded bringing a hand to his shoulder and shaking him quite aggressively. 

“She saw me, she turned away,” and again he whined not giving in to your heavy hand on his shoulder. “I don’t know what I did wrong, Y/N.”

Before you could comment on that, the professor opened the door of the classroom and made his way inside, dropping his bag on his desk and without further ado, he grab the chalk and started the lecture. 

“You should talk to her,” you whisper only loud enough for Yixing to hear you. “I’m sure she’s just having a bad day,”

“Is that an excuse to ignore me like that?” he was annoyed, more than you’ve ever seen. He was not handling it so well and you were afraid he would end up screw things up with her because of a possible misunderstanding. The professor turned around annoyed by your chattering but he simply focused on you and Yixing. Without having to say a word you know he meant for you to shut up. You quit talking and concentrated on the lecture, Yixing’s love life could wait two hours.

And two hours passed, everyone packed their stuff and left the classroom as fast as possible. You saw Yixing languidly move beside you, dragging his body around without motivation thinking only on the girl who hurt him. You were sure it wasn’t that big of a deal, that Yixing was just being dramatic, but you hated how he was behaving and how little he paid attention to the class you just had. 

“Let’s go, I’m starving,” you said dragging him by the hand and going to the cafeteria where you met your group of friends sitting by the table on the far end of the place. You bought your food and Yixing did the same, no sadness could suppress his hunger. With your trays in hands, you went approached your friends. 

“Exactly who I wanted to see!” said Baekhyun quite eager startling you. “Hanz texted me this morning asking if you and Yixing could come to the studio with me later in the afternoon,” he spoke gesticulating with his hands making you hyper aware of the juice box right in front of him. You pulled it closer to you before he knocked it down. “I should give you guys pointers before next rehearsals.”

Yixing on you side was paying little attention but he nodded anyway. You nodded in response not really minding the extra session with Baekhyun. It would actually help you a lot anyway, you wanted to keep up the good work just like Hanz had asked you and as Kyungsoo expected. The thought of him rang a bell causing you to look around and try to spot him btu he was nowhere to be seen. You even thought it was strange that it was Baekhyun who would give you pointers rather than Kyungsoo, the actual stage manager.

“Where’s Soo?” you asked hiding your interest behind a fake indifference.

“He’s running some errands today,” said Baekhyun, “Hence why I’ll be with you two this afternoon.”

Yixing once again nodded but you were sure he wasn’t listening to any of the conversation anymore. You ate your lunch in silence but laughed casually whenever one of your friends cracked a joke. When you got up after you finished, you pulled your bag over your shoulder and again you brushed your hair with your fingers but this time you didn’t expect to feel the long strands of hair, you were already getting used to the length of your locks. You smiled to yourself loving the change in attitude finally taking over you, slowly but surely. 

Act 2, Scene 4

Your hair flew with the wind as you ran across campus going to the studio to meet Baekhyun and Yixing. You felt the wind on your neck and it felt good, it felt fresh and you thought you didn’t need it until it hit you. Your script was almost falling out of your bag when you got to the door of the studio. You save it from falling, you pushed the door open and entered the room. Yixing wasn’t there, Baekhyun neither. You looked at the time on your phone and reassured yourself you weren’t neither late or early but rather punctual. You took the chance to text Baekhyun to know where he was because if Yixing wasn’t there to rehearse with you, at least Baekhyun could read his part for you to practice. You heard the door behind you making you turn around to find Kyungsoo making his way inside. 

“Soo? I thought Baek was supposed to be here.” he nodded in response and he wanted to explain his presence there, but before he needed to drop his bag on the floor and take the weight off his shoulder. 

“After all I could come so I told him not to. I’ll be leading the session with you guys today.” he said and placed his hands on his hips looking around but ending up to lay his eyes on you. “Where’s Yixing?”

You shrug your shoulders not really sure of what to say. You didn’t know if he was late or if he wasn’t gonna come at all, he wasn’t having a good day. Though, bad days never prevented him from doing his obligations. 

“Let’s give him another ten minutes. Maybe he’s just running late.” Kyungsoo said putting an end to the discussion. There was a silence between you two. It was the first time you were both alone like this, you weren’t sure of what to say or how to behave. You were not good at anything else besides acting and that was basically how you communicated with him. You performed, he loved you for the duration of the scene, he gave you feedback, and that was how you built your distant relationship. You didn’t know how to be you around him because usually you were just Mona. 

“Did you eat?” he walked to his backpack and opened it pulling out a tupperware full of strawberries. You smiled to him, your cheeks blushed, and due to the lack of hair now you couldn’t hide it from him. 

You sat down beside him, backs resting on the wall, shoulders touching each other. He opened the container and made sure you took one first before he served himself. You got rid of the small leaves on top of it then took a bite, the berry sweeter than you were expecting. 

He watched you attentively, but when he noticed he was smiling hypnotized by you, he forced his eyes off of you. Though, he wasn’t able to stop the laugh that came out softly as if hiding his embarrassment. 

“What?” you asked after you had swallowed the fruit. You grabbed another strawberry and again got rid of the leaves. You took a bite on it but never taking your eyes off of him being stronger than him this time. 

“Nothing,” he responded knowing damn well it was a lie. He was so close to you right now, closer than ever. You felt the butterflies in your stomach fly around and menacing hitting your guts for you make a move. But you froze when he turned to you and his eyes wandered your face and shamelessly stopped at your lips exactly when you licked the remnants of strawberry juice from them. “I think…” his lips moved but his eyes were still glued on the part he craved. You were also getting attracted to his own set of lips. “You’re smart,” he continued, “and talented,” he then took his time to lick his lips thinking it would give him the courage to finish what he started. “And pretty. Very pretty. The prettiest I’ve ever seen.” 

Your faces were inches from each other. Slowly and anxiously your moved in touching your noses, he closed his eyes first, then you closed yours,  it was all you wished for and nothing could ruin this moment. But you were wrong. The door of the studio swung open revealing a very late Yixing who breathed heavily but he seemed to have a better mood than earlier when you saw him. The unexpected sound of the door made startled you and Kyungsoo making you both distance yourselves and get up on a quick move. Kyungsoo cleared his throat and moved to get his script out of his bag. 

“Are we ready to start?” he asked. Yixing and you moved to the centre of the stage area holding your own scripts and opening on the page Kyungsoo indicated. “In this scene, Lay and Mona are finally giving in to each other’s wishes. Let’s try to bring back the energy from last rehearsal.”

For as much as you and Yixing had chemistry, nothing compared to what you felt with Kyungsoo. You could try hard to make this scene today look good, but your mind was numb with the proximity of Kyungsoo’s lips just a few seconds ago. You and Yixing had chemistry because you were friends, because you knew each other, because it was easy for you to be his scene partner. You and Kyungsoo had chemistry because it felt right, because you liked each other. 

Yixing started the scene already quite familiar with the lines. It was the first time you were passing it which made sense that Hanz wanted you to practice it outside rehearsal hours so you could come to it already familiar with the scene. It then came to you why he wanted you to rehearse that scene specifically. It was a kiss scene, the one that was supposed to make the audience fall in love with the characters. But you had to kiss your best friend. 

It wasn’t weird, you were an actor. It was only strange because you had never kissed Yixing before, and because the first time you would do it would be right after the guy you liked tried to kiss you. It was oddly unlucky. You didn’t know how Yixing felt about it, but by the blank look on his face, you were sure he also felt strange. 

“Can we try again? I rather we get familiar with the lines beforehand.” you asked trying to give yourself more time to get into character and to snap out of that strange feeling that held you back. Yixing nodded in agreement and so did Kyungsoo. So you went back a few pages and took from the top. 

You didn’t need the script, it was only in the way, so you decided to drop it to the floor and just go without it. Yixing did the same decided that it was of no help. Now with your free hands you had more freedom to move around and use your arms and hands to interact with Yixing. So you did the scene again stopping many times to hear Kyungsoo’s notes on blocking. After that, you took from the top and passed the scene one more time with no interruptions and when Yixing came closer to you, you didn’t stop yourself from falling into his arms and kissing him on the best Mona way possible. 

“That wasn’t too bad,” he said once you pulled away and you laughed at his cheeky comment. Kyungsoo on the other hand was battling internally. PArt of him thought you did a great job and that your talent and chemistry was really on point. The other part of him wished he was an actor and at that moment he was in Yixing’s place. But his professional side spoke louder making him command you to go back to your blocking and do the scene all over again, even if it made him boil in jealousy. 

Act 3, Scene 1

Mia trusted Yixing, she apologized for the instance in the hallway when she deliberately didn’t speak to him. She believed him when he said the girl at the bar was just a friend, that it was actually Y/N and it was just a normal night out with his friends. He confessed to her, he told her all the things she wanted to hear, he told her how she made his heart jump out of his chest when she smiled, and how with a simple look she drove him crazy. He was head over heels for her and now she knew. So she forgave him for supposedly “leading her on” and going out with another girl. There was no other girl, there was just you, Y/N, who was nowhere near falling in love with Yixing, but rather falling for the boy who you were yet to make a move on. 

But when her gut feeling told her to go check out on the boy, her heart sank to the pit of her stomach and nothing could bring it back up. Through the window of the door she saw the way he kissed you, the way he held you, and his smile when you pulled apart. She saw it with her bare eyes yet it was unbelievable. 

Unlike Mia, you  were doing quite better on the love department. Still unsure of where you stood in your relationship with Kyungsoo, you knew now that you were more than friends, that both of you wanted to be more than friends. You haven’t told Yixing what he had interrupted, thinking it would be best to keep it to yourself not to jinx it. But after rehearsal you didn’t have the chance to talk to Kyungsoo because Yixing dragged you by the hand to tell you in full detail all that had happened to him that afternoon. He wasn’t superstitious. 

“I’m happy for you, Xing,” you said touching his face in a caring way. You were proud of him like a mother would be proud of her son. “But I need to meet her or else you don’t have my approval.” He laughed with the condition. Although you were joking, he knew it was important for you to be introduced to her because you were important to him and vice versa.

“I gotta go now okay? I’m tired and I have a morning class tomorrow.” you said rubbing your face trying to keep yourself awake until you got home. “See you tomorrow?” he nodded in response and waved you goodbye.

*Italian: “a rehearsal in which the actors deliver their lines and perform the action at a much faster rate” TDF Theater Dictionary

[starglasszodiac]

SGZ Anniversary - Cassie and the Comic

The big one, the origin story!!!! And honestly one of my favourite memories to look back on. :’D I’ll be talking about both the idea itself and the evolution of Cassie’s character in what is a BEHEMOTH of a text post, so here we go!

While July 19th, 2015 is the official origin day of SGZ, it started a bit prior to that. I have this story already somewhat explained on the blog’s FAQ page, but I might as well reiterate it here:

SGZ started as an idea in the summer of 2015 after my buddy Laura showed me two webcomics: Paranatural by Zack Morrison, and Vibe by Dan Ciurczak (two comics I highly recommend, please go read them!). I loved how vibrant and beautiful their artwork was despite how different their stories were, and how wonderful the writing and humour was. My two biggest creative passions have always been visual art and writing, but ironically this was what really flicked the switch in my head to actually try comics, the literal combination of the two. Why I didn’t start sooner will forever be a mystery to me, but I suppose a lack of exposure to comics as a kid had something to do with it. Better late than never, right?

The specific launch day of July 19th is an homage to not only the creation of the idea but of the main protagonist, Cassie. After thinking “hey, I could do this!” I started wondering what I should make a comic about. While working at my retail job (on the slowest day in existence), I began to make a list of things that I liked or wanted to write a story about, and stars / astrology was one of them. I had always loved that aspect of mythology, and my affection for stars is a mystery to no one.

I worked at what was effectively a Blockbuster clone in my hometown (RIP Cherry Hill Video) and we had scrap pieces of paper that we made from old movie facings, so the first ever notes and doodles for this series exist on these scraps. I’ve still got quite a few of them, but they got a bit scattered when I moved for college. I’m hoping the rest are at my house somewhere.

I got the idea of a girl with a star in her eye, and called it the Starglass. And, well, the idea went from there! I started researching all of the zodiac signs and symbols, and drew the first (digital) drawing of Cassie when I got back home that day. Which, looked like this:

Seeing this again is not only weird and oddly nostalgic but it’s a testament to where my artistic sensibilities were prior to going to animation school. The idea for SGZ happened mere months before I was thrown into that 3-year fray of insanity so the evolution is pretty odd in places, especially how my knowledge of shape language, anatomy, etc. evolved and how my style adapted to that. I had almost NEVER drawn humans prior to going to college, so a lot of the art for this series deals with my inability to do so at the start. ^^’ The awkward phase, if you will. And as such, it is the first story idea I had that primarily focused on humans.

Looking back on it, Cassie’s character in terms of personality was pretty different than what it is now, but from a visual standpoint there’s (surprisingly) a lot that stayed. The basic idea of her hair stayed, right down to the double ponytail and orange clasps. Her freckles, eye colour and general face shape too, even if that ended up modified after solidifying her character later.

Her main colour was always red, in fact after making the headshot I remember having NO IDEA what to do for the rest of her body, so it just ended up being RED. Then I added the blue for the contrast, but I still wasn’t happy with it at the time (a perhaps subconscious origin for her blue pants though, lol). I also find amusement in the fact that my current concept for her mother Nora has her wearing blue flats much like these.

Based on the notes I have and what I remember, Cassie was older at this point (like 15 or 16 probably) and seemed to be a lot more sarcastic (this is a norm for a lot of my characters, trust me). xD Some of the first character interactions I ever wrote largely involved Cassie being sassy to one of the signs, back when a few of them were being over dramatic (looking at you SCORPIO). I cackled reading those interactions again now that my characters have changed so much. They’re not well written at all but they still let me look back to that time with fondness. :’D

What is also interesting is the progression of her name, or the fact that she didn’t have one right at the start. My earliest notes have simply Starglass or SG whenever I wrote dialogue. I started trying to think of a name, and contrary to popular belief, settling on Cassie actually had nothing to do with Cassiopeia. Though I do really enjoy the irony of that. xD It started with Cass, which could be short for either Cassandra or Cassidy, and I ended up going with Cassidy. I then changed it to Cassie, as I find the -ie suffix makes it a lot cuter. I am biased though, my name ends with it too, aha. There is a note that spells it as Cassi and for the life of me I cannot determine if that was a typo or not, but when I write fast I miss letters sometimes. The nickname of “Star” was one the table for a while too, and now that Star VS exists it’s even funnier. I specifically recall my mother telling me that she was going to suggest Star on the Facebook post I had made for the art at the time, but thought maybe it was too obvious. She was right, though this idea lives on in the nicknames that the signs end up giving Cassie later on, my favourite being “Little Star”.

While development for the story and characters started right away, it got a much welcomed jumpstart at the beginning of my second year at animation school. We were given a character design project that would span the entire year, and would require a story concept to complete all of the assignments. We were told this fact in first year to give us time to prepare over the summer, and I had just pulled an all-nighter to finish an assignment that day, but upon hearing this news I was not tired at all. Character design was already my favourite class, but this put it over the top. That beautiful feeling of inspiration that hits you is the BEST and in that moment nothing else mattered. Not even my fatigue, which I promptly dealt with the next day.

I used this as an opportunity to spend time developing the designs and story progression of all the characters, while getting marks for it at the same time! This is largely the reason I was able to launch the comic a few months after completing that year of school, as it ended up giving me full-sized references, colour schemes, and a much better idea of the story as a whole. Based on when my school years took place, I can actually track the progression of the characters pretty well through the artistic skill upgrade I was getting too.

The progression is pretty wild honestly, especially between 2015 and 2016:

(oh god these are so old help me) 

(these aren’t all of them either but I did my best jdhkfhsjkfhskjf)

From 2016 onwards I had the basic idea of her, so her colours stayed more or less the same once I actually added them. Cassie’s hair was one of the things that required a lot more iterations. I had her general idea down for a while, but when it came to making the character pack of her for my character design class, I remember having to sit down and actually figure out how her hair would work, structurally and otherwise, for that High Quality Refinement™ that was required of the project. Her older drawings had the part in her hair be in the middle, and that posed the problem of covering her eyes too much. If she was a more reserved character in any way this could have worked, but nah. I knew from the beginning she was going to be an outwardly eccentric child, one I wish I could have been when I was growing up.

Now for anyone that knows me as both a huge nerd and an artist, when it comes to fantasy stuff I LOVE armour. Absolutely love it. You see it everywhere in the things I make both inside and outside of SGZ, and I adore making themed costumes based on that (see my Feather Knights series for the most extreme example of this ever, ahahaha). So, it stands to reason that I would do the same for Cassie at some point, and I did! 

There was a particular focus on a helmet for a while too, whole plot points in fact! This helmet was, story wise, a long-standing plot point that proved difficult to change once the focus shifted. The initial idea was that the helmet belonged to Cassie’s science teacher (who is still a minor character in this as of now) and he gave it to her knowing its significance to the Starglass, thus establishing a sort of connection between Cassie’s normal life on Earth and the supernatural shenanigans that happen on the Astral Plane. The night she brings it home, she discovers that this little friend laid dormant inside:

This is Flicker. A character I’ve actually never revealed to anyone prior to now but hey, why not? The idea of Cassie having a spirit companion certainly didn’t come out of left field for me, but I wasn’t entirely sure how this character would appear, or what dynamic they would have with Cassie. I didn’t have pets bigger than a hamster growing up, so the idea of Cassie having a potential dog or cat companion would be new territory based on my own experiences. 

Flicker, as they are right now, acts as a sort of sensor for spirits that are roaming loose on Earth, and alerts Cassie to them... even if she’s not always up for a spirit hunt. They do have a backstory associated with how they appear and what their purpose is in the overall context of the world, but that isn’t revealed until much later in the story. For now Flicker is a cute little friend that cannot say much, but is devoted to protecting things, especially the Starglass. Luckily they still made the cut when it came to the helmet idea, and you should be meeting them officially pretty soon in the comic! :D

While the initial problem was getting any sort of cohesive look to the helmet or any other armour in terms of concept, I found as the story developed along with Cassie’s design, both her hair and her star sweater ended up being her two most “iconic” qualities aside from her eye, and using armour would have covered that up. 

On top of that, Cassie didn’t really end up being the type of character that would use armour, as one might expect from a character that has to fight and defend things a lot. She’s one to do things a little differently, and both her and the signs discover that, well, different works! It wasn’t a matter of her physical strength for the majority of the problems she faces, but rather strength of heart, and that’s a very personal note for me to touch on with this character. As such, nothing about an armour concept ever came out of the sketch phase:

It still makes for really interesting ideas though, so I’m sure I can work these into something else I’m working on. :’D Knowing myself, I’ll find a way. (The wings are VERY Cardcaptors though lol)

What did stay, however, were her swords:

She had at least one sword at the very beginning of this concept, but it eventually evolved into two. I find it interesting that sun, moon and star symbols were always present, regardless of what iteration these swords went through. Their official names are the Sun Star and Moon Star Swords respectively. Aside from the few doodles here and there for the zodiac weapons, this was the first appearance of any kind of fantasy weapon in SGZ. I can confirm that Cassie and the signs were going to have weapons from the get-go though, this IS something I made after all. xD

I think I also need to mention the main influences for this series, as the love for those things is very evident in my work, from the visuals to the storytelling and everything in between. Aside from my general interest in fantasy topics such as mythology and astrology, here’s a list including (but not limited to) the series that inspired the making of SGZ:

Kirby, Steven Universe, Harry Potter, Avatar: The Last Airbender & The Legend of Korra, Cardcaptor Sakura / Cardcaptors, Kim Possible, Danny Phantom, and pretty much any other show I’ve watched about surviving school while going on crazy adventures. That stuff may be cliche now but I’ll be damned if I don’t love it still.

I grew up with some of these and the rest are new, but they’re all near and dear to my heart for many reasons. I’m happy that I can put that love into something I’ve made, and share that story with the world. 

I know I’ve got a lot more ranting about this story to do in general and the comic is still going, but I want to say some special thanks to some of SGZ’s biggest supporters: 

Laura, Eleanor, and my classmates and teachers at Seneca College. This comic wouldn’t exist without you. <3

I’ll be honest, working on this series got me through some of the toughest years of my life so far, and this was one of the first times where something I made actually came to fruition in some way, and had a genuine development period that I can look back on. I’ve grown a lot as both a person and an artist since then, and doing this look back in time really solidified that for me. I have a cast of characters that I love, and now I get to tell their story. So if you’ve stayed till the end in this gigantic post, thank you. I don’t know where this story will lead me, but with any luck it’ll be somewhere in the stars. Thanks for reading, friends. <3

[philosworkbench]

Meetings, Agendas, and why the best conversation spot at the party is always the kitchen

Re: my last long post about authenticity vs. polish. It’s hard enough to figure out how to have an authentic “monologue.” Building effective dialogue? That is a high-wire act.

When Bad Meetings Go Terrible...

I have been in my share of poorly run meetings and I’ve run them. Here are some of my favorite things to hate about meetings. You’ll see I left out saying “the facilitator is unprepared,” because a lack of preparedness and forethought underscores all of these.

The point of the meeting is unclear. No one really knows why they’re there. What do we expect to achieve?

Similarly, the expectations are unclear. Who is talking when? Are only the meeting’s organizers really talking? What are the unwritten rules?

Psychological safety is low. The attendees are there to cover their ass. They aren’t excited about what might be accomplished by their presence. They’re there because of what may be risked by their absence.

The facilitators have chips on their shoulders. They ask for feedback and then get angry when they hear it. They answer questions curtly; they make obvious signals to say “that’s not the conversation we came for.”

The facilitators are on the defensive. Maybe they called the meeting months ago and are now forgetting why they called it. Maybe they were supposed to meet with each other before the big meeting and never did. Regardless of why, they take every question like it’s a criticism. They speak in rapid circles. They act like they have to answer everything when they’re the only people who are expecting them to have an answer.

The facilitators are doing all the talking. (This is my personal weakness.) The facilitator asks a question and almost immediately starts giving their own answer “as an example.” This can be fear, which makes 5 seconds feel like 50. Or, it can be manipulation. “We as a group need to decide...” becomes code for “I need you idiots to agree to something I already know I want. So, lets ‘discuss’ it calmly.”

The participants are thrown in the deep end. The facilitator says, “we’re here to talk about x, so let’s get started...” What follows has no structure. It’s just unrefereed free-for-all for the full length of the meeting. No “let’s start with a breakout and then report back as a group.” No “here’s a brief presentation to remind everyone of where we’re at so far.” No “we’re covering these 5 questions today. We’re going in this order so these reasons.” Just the morass of “I was told to have a meeting about X, so I scheduled time, we’re here. Let’s talk about it.”

Good facilitation is no party. It’s work. But the best analogy I have for what you want to create as a facilitator is a party. Specifically, the kitchen of a party.

Why I Would Have Been Bad at Hosting and Facilitation in College

Full disclosure: I was pretty awful at parties in college. Not like a “I don’t party because I study so much and have carved out such a bright future” nerd. No, perish the thought. I was always the, “I hate my body, have undiagnosed anxiety, and don’t know I’m bisexual yet so I spend parties making Doctor Who references and speaking in a British accent. No thank you, I’ll keep my freakishly long overcoat on. Yes I will wear it the entire time. No, I am not comfortable. Are there snacks?”

As a college student, I was the epitome of a bad facilitator:

I hadn’t handled my own shit enough to help others set aside theirs

I was so focused on how I was coming off that I couldn’t see anyone else for who they were

I did things to make myself comfortable that specifically made others uncomfortable

I entered a shared space with no appreciation for how it operated and what the pre-existing cultural mores were

I came, expecting snacks, and never brought any

When I came to Chicago in my twenties to do improv comedy, I’d like to think I got better at parties. There were always improv parties at somebody’s apartment. Different rooms in the apartment would take on different personas:

The living room was the bit-fest where everyone kept trying to get funnier (and therefore louder) than everyone else, and of course, the music, which was also loud. (Yes, I thought loud music was unnecessary, even in my twenties. I have never, ever, been cool.)

The back porch was for smokers and those who hadn’t quite come into the party yet, or who hadn’t quite left. There was smoke and everyone was just about to go somewhere else. It was party purgatory. Partytory.

Bedrooms were for coats, hooking up, and the occasional board or card game. 

Then there was always that weirdly shaped, new construction vs. old, hallway that was darker than it had to be. This was often where the “always on” improvisers would be doing something improv-y. A warm-up game. A free-style hip hop cypher. Or a hushed “deep” conversation about “the art.” 

Then there was the kitchen.

But the Kitchen at an Improv Party Tho...

The kitchen at an improv party was absolutely my favorite spot. As I look back on it, it absolutely showed me how to facilitate a good meeting.

It’s the chill eye of the party hurricane. The problem with many work meetings is they carry the defeatist assumption that they should be as awful as the rest of work often is. Work can often feel too loud, fast, and chaotic. You’re dealing with everyone’s drama. Your inbox is a company’s worth of polite shouting. But then there’s your meeting. Each meeting can be a permission you give yourself (and your participants) to stop. You have something to discuss. There’s a dialogue. Take a breath and get everyone to do the same. Create shared understanding. Make a group decision. Turn that decision into armor and step back into the hurricane. (Is it good to wear armor in a hurricane? I have no idea.)

You can tell how much the host cares about their guests. A neat kitchen with plenty of bags of chips, etc.? Stacked bowls. Extra 2 liters of soda/mixers? ICE? (A host with enough ice for a big party is hero. QUILT THEM A CAPE.) Is the kitchen well-lit? Cozy? Are trash and recyclables being managed? None of that happens by accident. The facilitator who plans a thoughtful agenda that gives participants clear jumping off points for discussion and brings them back in for a safe, meaningful, and productive landing? They remembered the ice.

The only people there are adding to the experience. The unwritten rule of Chicago improv parties was that assholes always held court in the living room. They could be loud. They could vie for attention. They could make it all about them. But that didn’t fly in the kitchen. The kitchen was for dialogues, not diatribes. It was an authentic space where people could actually listen to each other. And people who were only there to be seen would quickly become uncomfortable in the kitchen, realize the rest of us weren’t having their one-person show, get their ice cubes or paper towels or whatever and GTFO. So be it. “We would have all such offenders so caught off.”

Not everyone is invited to a good meeting. Sorry ‘bout it. If everyone’s invited, it’s not meeting, it’s a panel discussion. They’re not participants, they’re audience members who sometimes speak up. You have to be clear about this. People like knowing what’s expected of them in a meeting. If you have 40 people in a room and say, “who has a comment?” make sure you’ve earned that with clarity. Everyone in that room needs to know what the program is about and what the real (usually unspoken) expectations are. I’ve made the mistake of planning a living room and telling myself it would be a kitchen. It sucks and people will only come to your next “party” if they have to.

The conversation follows its own logic, but it’s clear when it should change, and everyone lets it. The facilitator of the kitchen is a great listener, but also a great watcher. They’re looking for body language that says, “I guess, but I’ve used up my caring about this topic.” Time to pivot. Did you get what you needed? No? Too bad. Give people a new ally to go down and come back. No all elephants should be eaten at once.

The environment doesn’t scream, “stay here forever and don’t do anything.” No one is in the kitchen because it’s the most comfortable room in the house. The conversation is making them engage despite the room. This is why agile teams do their meetings standing. I’m not saying to go out of your way to make people uncomfortable, but try to get people closer together. Discourage multi-tasking. Do an icebreaker that actually builds emotional connections. Do things that pull people toward each other. Everyone sitting around the world’s largest table and leaning back in the world’s softest chairs are not in the kitchen.

You’re not quite sure whose apartment it is. Last thing. In the kitchen, the facilitator doesn’t make sure everyone knows they’re wearing a different hat than everybody else. The facilitator leads by popping a volleyball into the air just the right way. People smack it around. The volley lasts a while. When the ball finally hits the ground, it’s because that’s when it was time to happen. Everyone feels it. The facilitator was there to correct the ball’s path when it almost went out of bounds. But the players were always more focused on the ball than the facilitator. (Side note: the facilitator is also probably not always standing around saying, “How about that ball I threw in there? Did you see how I did that? Pretty snazzy! You’re welcome!”)

Okay, I’ve so far mixed every metaphor. Parties. Rooms of a house. Hurricanes. Volleyball. I had a really cool one about how best to hold a fencing foil, but that will have to wait.

Fine, Here’s your TL;DR: 

The adept facilitator creates a space (literally, culturally, and contextually) for participants to be their full selves -- where they can really talk and really listen about what matters. The adept facilitator can only do this by getting out of their own way. If the facilitator hasn’t appropriately dealt with their own fears and needs, they will start co-opting the participants’ work from having the meeting they need to have, to making the facilitator feel better about the meeting that person wants them to have. Do the work, both on yourself and on your plan for a kickass meeting.

[elizabethrobertajones]

13x07 Watching Notes

Should probably not have multiple scenarios where I snark out loud and then the very next line of dialogue is that snark but innocently delivered.

Heyooo it’s not our Christmas cliffhanger though!

Expectations: It has literally just occurred to me right now sitting down to type out my expectations that this season's *entire* main plot so far has been "the spawn of satan is cuter than we expected".

I'm still trying to wrangle the idea of how you get hours of Buckleming plot twists and slow exposition out of this, although introducing 18 different angles for them to tackle the problem and returning us to the AU world is a good start to have at least 4 plot threads going and hey I feel like this episode is supposed to be a breather for having too many Jack episodes in a row which makes it even funnier that they're gonna have to deal with the absence of something but who knows maybe he will show up before episode 9. If not they may genuinely be tricked into considering narrative negative space in some form or another, at least by the actual omission of Jack from the episode, despite the fact it has to be about him.

There's like at least 3 individual ways each arc might go terribly, and I'm typing this as pre-yoga thoughts while trying to do my NaNoWriMo and I watched Brooklyn 99 already this morning, and essentially I'm pretty much just bracing against "Oh god this new sleep pattern is the worst and it has ruined nearly every episode this season for me" migraines. So I'm just gonna be super chill because the stress of this ridiculous bed at 8pm awake at 5am thing is killing me without bad writing on my favourite show.

So, instead of modelling a worst case scenario, here's a best case one: it's crowded, the pacing is bad, there's some bizarre lines of dialogue and no room for any character interaction and the sneak peek already showed us the sum total of Destiel interaction but in hindsight with the rest of the episode that's actually a plus, and aside from that there's no rape or catastrophic bad decisions or characterisation that just makes our guys look like idiots because the villains aren't that smart and they're still outwitting them or something. Cas wasn't even mentioned in the episode description if I recall and I would like to think that is because he gets Buckleminged in the way where they forget he exists so he's in 2 scenes and just kinda stops at some point and that's the last we hear of him for a few episodes but at least nothing happened to him :P

(It HELPS that the bad decision of the year seems like it should be Jack and Kaia ganging up in 13x09 and this is just a plot filler episode where they can't blow everything up from sheer incompetence, since the main plot is still Jack, and all Buckleming can do is escalate stuff but not so much we find Jack, so they're mostly running free with Lucifer, Michael and Asmodeus on the playground they've been permitted to keep them distracted. On the other hand, that does not lend itself towards 'storytelling structure' whatsoever. So I may derive some fun from mentally re-writing this episode as it goes as well.)

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Hi I'm back and I have tea and preemptive paracetamol and look I not do crap like this lightly but the only thing wrong with me is sleep and yoga but glug glug glug down the hatch, I'm not fucking around, migraine. I swear to god if I even see a HINT of you...

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I should also mention that my only prep for this episode was watching Tall Tales last night with my mum because we're lightly re-watching season 2 and I thought you know what look how far that fucker has come that he's just one of the show's regular directors now or something. I forgot that completely this morning so I'm amending my expectations (it WAS annoyingly early in the day) to add that Speight hasn't directed a Buckleming yet but I'm interested to see how he handles it.

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The episode starts with Mary cheerfully punching Lucifer at least 3 times in the face. I am still extremely proud of her for doing that but overall disappointed that it's led to her banishment to be a Buckleming character this season, which has been a fast way to ruin characters.

We get the entire first minute of the recap in Buckleming POV, aka they write the corny villains - and specifically a lot of Asmodeus point of view, his summary of the situation and what needs doing, having graciously inherited this throne, and comments on where Lucifer is as a sort of trailing off, well that's not my concern if he's gone. Only at the minute mark does the recap flip around to something genuinely ABOUT Jack as we've been seeing him, rather than trying to sell Jack as woooo Lucifer's scaaary son. Suddenly Jack's own identity crisis and him leaving.

Maybe it's just because they were trimming for time, but they cut the "all of you" from "I know I'm going to hurt you" but they also left the focus on Sam. I am mostly amused that by removing the clarification - which has been a theme of the season - it reduces that moment to a bare minimum surface layer, as if to say bye bye writing depth hello random action.

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I had a burgeoning theory last year from one episode or another that pretty much everyone is lampooning Buckleming while letting them get on with writing their stuff, and trying to run loops around them in basically any other way.

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There was something going on on screen involving a lot of stock footage while I was digging around in my bag looking for my 3DS assuming this was gonna be a Lucifer scene. I still think they're softening him up to kill him, but that's something I have to hope. One of the other non-redemption options is that they need to make him at least halfway manageable if he is gonna end up working with Cas or something. There is something vaguely appropriate matching Buckleming dialogue to Lucifer melodramatics, but unfortunately I really can't give these writers or that character much of a chance so while I'm happy to let them take him to play with over on their bit of the story like a chew toy to keep them off the stuff I like, it is annoying this is all the canon of the show I like >.>

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One or the other of Buckleming really really dislikes God and organised religion though, and that does often lend the interesting thing to an episode where for some reason as soon as religion is involved the writing actually gets halfway decent.

One thing Lucifer says that catches my interest is his idea the universe is written without irony, when tbh that has literally been his downfall in season 5, and in general the universe is ironic to the WINCHESTERS to whom the universe is actually happening to, and there's the whole Dean is the centre of the universe thing, and THEN there's Billie's line about how sometimes the universe is poetic, coupled with how Dean got Cas back entirely through dramatic irony. I can't remember if Chuck commented on dramatic irony. Anyway Lucifer sucks, the story doesn't happen to him and he doesn't have the resources to read it. Metatron *thrived* on that sort of thing.

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I like the visual of Michael standing with the sun behind him - it gives him absolutely the divine look he'd love to have, and I just wish he didn't have randomly shirtless Lucifer taking up some of that visual. If someone doesn't make a gifset chopping Lucifer out to just enjoy that image, I will make one, perhaps.

Something else to enjoy about this: they locked Mark P in some sort of medieval torture device and no matter how comfy you try and make it, there's obvious limits to that, so I will enjoy that he had to do that.

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Michael sees that Lucifer is scared of being locked up and caged, which actually is... accidentally or not... a pretty clever callback, although it wouldn't have killed them to have Michael deduce this on screen, because in 9x18 Dean - Michael's vessel - deduces that Gadreel - a blatant Lucifer parallel in many respects while obviously not in many many others - is terrified of being caged again.

Of course that exchange is one of the single most fascinatingly well-acted exchanges of the entire show which on my umpteenth viewing still knocks me completely flat so it's not a FAIR comparison, but it is an interesting one.

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I like that Michael think that the main universe is already paradise - in comparison to his shithole, definitely, because it still has pretty stock footage. Thematically interesting since obviously paradise is a bit of an issue with what people want...

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LOL Wanek's ridiculous "concrete bunker" set... The camera pulls back and there's a massive Jesus on the wall and Lucifer's hanging behind him screeching and it's like... That is an inanimate lump of wood and I can see it rolling its eyes at you.

In the earlier moments out here in the AU we saw the church from 8x23 poking up out of the rubble, and whether this is the same one or not NOW, because I think it was a bit too buried to be this one, it conjures the memory of 8x23, and that one was interesting specifically because Jesus wasn't there - the cross had only his hands and feet remaining and the rest had been torn down. Sam was inserted into that empty space because he was doing the big heroic world-saving sacrifice that from one direction of pure irony the episode was named after (since he decided not to do it/the real motives for his sacrifice were way more interesting than him going through with it heroically anyway etc) but it was another Sam and Jesus moment, like in 5x22 where he more straight-forwardly sacrificed himself.

(And jeeze you watch one episode with the guy and now I can't get him out of my head - remembering in 9x18 Gabriel snarking about how he died for their sins and then making one of the few Jesus references on the show. Jesus is usually extremely absent from this show, so actually having him on screen is very interesting)

Anyway I am pretty sure this is almost entirely to remind Lucifer what a great big fucking drama queen he is being about this all and of course he's sacrificing for nothing.

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Blah blah promo scene.

They have the photo of Jack from Mia's security camera which means no one has snapped a cute picture of him on their phone yet, Cas included. Disappointing.

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Now, I'm pretty hesitant to get into characterisation in BL episodes, and Dean just generically wryly comments on how powerful Jack is which could mean anything but Sam then says he might be covering his tracks and then Cas, who has to be written sympathetic to Jack, comes through the door saying that it could mean Jack is in trouble with the various forces that want to control him. Sam's comment coupled with Cas's interruption seems to make it much more likely that Sam's comment is to be taken as vaguely unnerved/suspicious of what Jack can do, and that he's doing things like that Dean implies. That Jack learned so fast he might be able to cause a fair amount of destruction but conceal it from them and if they're trying to track him, Sam is expecting destruction.

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Dean also came from the kitchen with coffees so why is Cas coming from the back of the Bunker... I'm gonna have to assume he was until just now lounging around in Dean's bed and Dean was like I better go get coffee and help Sam and Cas was like yeah but thanks for the 'sorry your son ran away' sex i feel a lot better and Dean was like no problem babe, and probably gave Cas one of those ridiculous shoulder nudges in the most no homo way ever before he got up to find where they threw his underwear an hour earlier, and Cas just kinda chilled while Dean was getting the coffee so as not to be suspicious by piling in on Sam after taking the exact same length break from the search but then they fucked it up and still managed to enter the scene within 30 seconds of each other.

Yeah, that's probably it.

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I just saw the list of guest stars wander by and took 3 emergency gulps of my tea at that combo of Osric and for some reason DHJ because file that under genuinely unexpected :P

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PS: I know we knew Kevin would be back this year but the fact I managed to find Kevin thematic stuff in the last 2 episodes in a row still feels important to me as storytelling rather than foreshadowing.

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Anyway Cas tries to tell Dean the angels don't like him, and Dean volunteering to go with him because "i could go with you" is a thing and they keep doing it to each other and ow

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Blah blah we could work a case. Are you serious? I really seriously hope this is not literally Buckleming's thought process about wtf do we do with Sam and Dean this episode after establishing maybe 4-5 other plotlines we need to handle away from them. I hope it turns out to be directly main plot related, whatever they stumble on, but we already now have them in a position where any involvement with the main stuff will be them stumbling on it or it coming to them. See above: ways in which the main characters are automatically made to be stupid. Subtle things, like not being able to imagine a way in which Sam and Dean are resourceful enough to even start to find Jack which doesn't involve googling things.

I mean we have no clue what you're doing with this random witch seeming case, why can't you bring a detail foreward if it's from the main plot to give us a clue. And if it's not, tell us something connected to it which will at least make Sam and Dean interested in it as a lead? Even if they're not right about why, put them on the trail because they're good at their jobs!

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Anyway hi Asmodeus? As soon as we clear the promo scene etc I start assuming everyone is Asmodeus

I mean, in this case it literally is. but you can't trust anyone these days.

He needs to have his equivalent scene to sitting around in the Bunker googling, which, which is to say, the same type of minions who brought Crowley or Lucifer news are now coming toadying in to tell Asmodeus news, and the only difference is his name is harder to spell.

He's trying to do the same thing reaching out to Jack that we saw Lucifer trying to do last season, to Dagon. There is always the possibility that Asmodeus just isn't powerful enough to get into Jack's head from this extreme range when he has no idea where he is. Loser.

This minion seems to be mistakenly labelling Jack as "the Jack", maybe not as a mark of respect but more misunderstanding what he is, that he's not a thing, that that's his name...

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Asmodeus asks who's protecting Jack, and cut to the image of Jesus again. I don't know about him, but tbh it could just be that Jack is protecting HIMSELF and they've massive underestimated him to do that. Jesus on this show represents a lot more of the personal autonomy saving yourself thing.

Also hey as long as we're not seeing Jack, we're getting that gosh darned hole in the narrative that he represents while he's missing. Is this actually a lesson in subtlety?

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Michael meanwhile is enjoying tormenting Lucifer some more because blah blah sole purpose in life and what do you even do when you win.

Lucifer appears to have claimed to be a god in the SPN verse and Michael's like, here you're pathetic, and I'm like, mate, he was pretty pathetic in the main SPN universe too

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There's some cool crosses on the walls which are trying to help, bringing light into this church.

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Yeah where is Mary anyway - I wasn't gonna ask, but then Lucifer seemed to imply that Michael was keeping her around.

I mean sheesh the easiest way to get Mary around is to just have her in the scene still lurking but then film it as if it's almost entirely from her eyeballs POV if she doesn't have anything else to be doing right now - having her witnessing this theatre as the person from the main SPN world who's come over here.

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KEV

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Awwww he's gone a wee bit off the rails in this world, seeing as he'd have had to be helping Michael and reading tablets the entire time and also the entire world appears to be destroyed.

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I don't know why Lucifer's having a personal reaction to Kevin unless I totally forgot something but they were literally never in the same seasons as each other although weirdly both in 11x21 so obviously must just be angels would know all the prophetsand which one was currently active... Maybe he's just surprised that in the AU Kevin survived even longer than he did in the supposedly better world.

Well there aren't any Winchesters in this one and Lucifer always underestimates them, in this case positively re: likelihood of getting Kevin killed :P

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Oh great they're powering down Lucifer a bit. Well that should make him much more irritating.

I mean mostly because everything makes him irritating.

But it means the show wants him around some more but they can't have him at full power because it's just inconvenient so now they're finding a reason to water him down so they can have him around dragging his heels and complaining. I suppose it might make some comparisons to Cas, who's on a smidgen of left-over grace, but again, see also: eye rolling wooden Jesus, there's no way you can redeem Lucifer and not by comparing him to Cas.

Metatron got some sort of treatment but he was nowhere near like Cas even when he was done being redeemed and he still had to be killed off doing a heroic thing rather than let him stick around.

I'm just grinding my teeth and I already got part of the way through the next scene but UGH

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So hey thinking of random versions of other characters why is DHJ's magnificent facial hair making a cameo return role on this side of the interdimensional nosense? You can't just grow a beard and start hunting witches on the down low on the winchesters' turf.

I'm assuming including DHJ's names in the credits was specifically some sort of nonsense now

specifically monsters going around looking like other things.

Maybe it was a shapeshifter Ketch punched a few weeks ago. It's only been a few weeks since he died, you know.

Maybe it's Asmodeus.

Maybe it's maybelline

The plot reason for the beard had better be hilarious.

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I like Daniella the Beret Witch. For some reason I thought she looked tons like the witch Sam and Dean were looking at on the CCTV but when I went back to look I actually spotted her in the background watching them and waiting to make her move, and she doesn't look like the one on the CCTV at all so I guess my brain clocked her and filed her away because she was sitting around in a huge scarf, sunglasses and a beret and my brain didn't want me to not pay attention to her in case she was useful.

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Kevin's weirdly pristine but still grey hoodie is making me giggle. He looks like the AU has barely touched him and Michael's even dirty and ragged.

I'm not sure I even want to touch random morality discussions from Buckleming. Lucifer says Michael is pure evil, Kevin says "aren't you Satan?" and Lucifer really hasn't done anything ever to make us actually want to root for him. Like sure Michael is the much worse bigger bad in the show's rankings but that doesn't make Lucifer less quanitifiably evil. Michael's way more complex because Lucifer is the big cartoon evil that Sam had to originally fear, the "what if I am actually evil" character mirror that obviously Sam isn't but it meant Lucifer needed no character complexity other than whiny manipulative interpretations of how he'd been mistreated where he could protest he had a side. Michael is waaaay more complex just in the like 2 episodes he actually talks in season 5 because he's "what if Dean was the big bad" and he's not evil, he's just 100% black and white morality rigid "good" in the sense of punishing evil, to the point of not questioning an order to kill his brother, and not even having a particularly "cool motive still murder" approach like Cain, but literally just like well okay then I guess I will kill my brother. How to make DEAN evil, or to personify the darkness that lives in him.

I mean I am massively simplifying but dear lord Buckleming if you read my notes this is the baseline direction you need to be writing these characters from and I am trying to HELP.

I am genuinely feeling like you're mistaking "apparent fan favourite because they make a lot of memes about him, Lucifer" as "this must mean people genuinely like him because he's Lucifer" and any possible reason I would find him interesting as a villain who was held up to just kinda exist and be himself doing his awful things contrasted to Michael who was just around existing and doing his awful things, is all just draining away down the toilet. Like you've got Lucifer lodged in there and you're flushing and flushing around him >.>

Anyway I'm going to take this entire scene as 100x more ironic than it was probably originally intended to be, that Kevin is not exactly right about Michael (and lol, Michael being the Dean parallel just kinda using Kevin all the time for random spells and always having him on the hook for doing things for them) but he's sure not wrong about Lucifer, Lucifer protesting Michael is evil because he's mistreating him and has destroyed this planet sure isn't WRONG but it's not a "so therefore I must be right"

And I kind of think the level of subtlety this writing is at is that "Michael is a dick and therefore Lucifer looks better in comparison"

But that's not how any of this works

*insert Jesus eyeroll*

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*pats poor overworked manic AU!Kevin's hair*

I wonder if he's actually going to be able to do it

it would be HILARIOUS if they waste Lucifer's grace on this

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Hey he did it, I'm proud of you AU!Kev. He always manages to do the thing :P

Okay not good that Lucifer has just been thrown back because A: Mary is still trapped over there, I assume for the much more important emotional arc stuff to do with rescuing her especially in the parallel to getting Cas back and all this stuff for Sam's arc and all

But UGH the writing of Lucifer is just really annoying me on so many levels and punting him back into the main SPN universe depowered and humbled by his brother, just annoys me so much.

Like I don't know how much more less enthused I have to be about Lucifer having struggles.

Boo hoo

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Last season Dean got mistaken for homeless after he got hit with the memory spell, and was offered cash to make him go away.

he handled it considerably better than Lucifer.

I am just gonna assume this random woman is Asmodeus.

Lucifer probably ought to go grab that cash he was offered...

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Oh wait here's Asmodeus, torturing some poor bloke called Karl who apparently works at the motel from last week.

I'm impressed they managed to track Jack that far, tbh

The question is, is there an actual memo that the Winchesters are camped in an old, heavily warded, impossible to map or locate MoL bunker, or is that something you only find out after you tail them for a bit? I mean Jack might not be there any more either but it would be a start :P

I feel extra skeevy about this scene because Asmodeus is being a total moron for starters by not checking Karl's level of clued in to this, and so he's this white plantation owner coded guy in his shiny white suit, torturing a black guy who isn't even on the same level as him for info he doesn't have, and could in no way be resonably expected to know. So it's doubly cruel. Although in some respects Asmodeus's coding makes this gratuitous violence a commentary, just like Buddy and Dave being collosal douches to women in the last few episodes was called out in many ways simply by their existence and coding as collosal douches.

Still not nice to watch on screen, especially without even more specific reference to Asmodeus's doucheyness because the stupidity of this dialogue is not helping.

Like did the minions just bring Karl to him and say hey we tracked the Winchesters and Jack this far, he might know more?

Like...

This is the sort of basic intelligence test fail here, that they're not over-thinking this scene in the specific details that you need to not have your main villain parade around displaying total idiocy over.

Like why the Winchesters would book into a motel under "Sam and Dean Winchester and Jack the Nephilim" and then Karl would know that and know what that means.

You can't just drag a normy into the Hell Main Office and torture them for info about Jack when they have no clue who that is.

He literally

can shapeshift

into anything

Go to the Stampede Motel, turn into a pretty girl in a low cut top, and lean on the motel check in desk until you know what you were after.

I'm no longer impressed they found Karl, I'm AMAZED.

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Why did they kiiiiill him

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Lol Asmodeus is so hammy

what's he sensing

Has he figured out Lucifer is back?

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Meanwhile: Sam and Dean voluntarily go to a creepy cabin in the woods with a witch. This is not quite as stupid as Asmodeus was just being.

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I am loving the plot development that David Hayden Jones has returned to the show as himself to find Rowena. Like dammit, you were a really cool character I had no interaction with but we coulda had some screen magic for all you know. You may or may not be in this episode as a surprise appearance which as Lizzy said putting MY name in the credits is the "hey it's that guy" fuckery to distract from the fact there's some bigger fuckery at foot (like... aside from the fact I was back to back with OSRIC FUCKING CHAU) because you don't *just* randomly put my very recognisable name in the credits at the start of the episode with Osric unless it's because something's up. So heeey here I am, I'm looking for Rowena, because dangit Ruthie deserves another chance to be in this show.

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Daniella is also really slow to realise that Sam just said she was going to be bait. It took until Dean repeated it for her to realise.

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She's really pretty though.

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She starts choking like several moments before the gas hits her

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... is that DHJ?

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I mean we're getting a close up on his face but I literally. Do. Not. Recognise. Him.

I remember rambling at some point in my watching notes in season 12 when his face was being particularly hilarious after I'd seen con photos of DHJ that Ketch is one of the most effective character disguises I've ever seen for an actor's face. TBH it's the same weird different face thing I get from Alex Calvert - that he's all clean shaven and filmed as a wee nougat child in the show but he has an instagram of unrecognisable smouldering glamour shots, often with scruff. DHJ has a beard and that's his face, and part of the Ketch look was being clean shaven and crammed in a tight collar which is an incredibly British upper class twit look, and even in other clothes later the illusion lasted... But add a beard and stop grooming his hair and he just turns into some other person entirely.

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Ah well, Dean gets to punch DHJ with Ketch's accent again which must be satisfying for him.

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Did they take DHJ back to the Bunker? Really?

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Oh he doesn't have the tattoo

LOL he's his "twin" "brother"... Obviously.

Yeah okay whatever you say, DHJ.

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elizabethrobertajones Hey what if DHJ was actually Rowena

mittensmorgul oh god, don't give them ideas

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ALSO if you have an "evil twin brother" you would generally assume that this sort of thing would happen a lot and you'd try and clarify sooner? I bring up my twin like every other time I talk about myself.

Also this is a ridiculous concept I refuse to engage with

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I mean, thematically, wowsers. Fits right in with Buddy and Dave and things that look like other things

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ALSO DHJ has been going around torturing witches so it's not like he's been the good twin

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ALSO WHY IS HE HERE?

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Apparently he's a hitman hunter

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I suppose it's kind of like Bela but I do find it really strange.

Like how does anyone even know to hire him if no one knows monsters exist? Who is pointing him at these things?

Insinuating himself into situations like Bela to get work maaay be a way to do it, like if the Winchesters showed up in town and immediately told the sheriff what was up and then offered their fee as contractors or something. Pfft.

Pfft.

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And then he's like "we hunters" because he's trying to bond with them or something

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To google!

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It's convenient he kept a beard his whole life

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Oh okay Sam stole hard drives from the BMoL and is using their actual data.

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I like the side by sides of their report cards where the prop people literally did them backwards from each other. "*More effort required!" they say about Alexander, and "Excellent work!" for Arthur.

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Dean isn't buying it

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LOL they dumped Ketch's corpse into the waste canal.

Do you want a haunted Bunker? That's how you get a haunted Bunker.

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Anyway Dean is like NOPE don't believe it and Sam's like... there's so much proof... and then he goes in to question DHJ again and DHJ is like... you literally saw me get shot in the head last season, you don't trust that? And Sam's like no I had to concede that Dean had a point that we really can't trust anything and I guess Cas did just randomly come back or something and we have horrific problems with the white men on this show coming back again for completely random reasons that make no sense so you had better bloody well actually be re-introducing Rowena into the narrative even more dramatically than the warning Billie gave about the red-headed witch that Dean probably didn't tell me about now come to think of it, but I'd still like to see her again because we had a sort of weird thing we never really talked about going on...

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Also are they keeping DHJ in the store room that showed up for the pencil scene but isn't the other store room? It looks like a different part of the Bunker repurposed.

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Sam mis-reads Ketch, maybe because he never knew him as well as Mary or even Dean saw him. DHJ is like dude I played him for a year and psychoanalysed him and his crush on Dean in multiple interviews, so trust me when I tell you all his character exposition.

The stuff about being loyal to Heaven - I mean the BMoL - and being a company man echo what Ishim said about old Cas in 12x10

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DHJ like, I did so much character work in those interviews, and I never got a chance for Ketch to be sympathetic so let me offer some more insight on him now you have me in the worst interview chair ever.

Also, don't go into pop culture journalism, Sam

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"If he were here, he'd admit regret to some of the things he did to your family"

Yeah unless you have a magic twin link (well... not unlikey tbh with random ass canon pulls) you're either Arthur Ketch or just DHJ enjoying doing interviews about Ketch to a twisted and weird level and I'm sort of gonna have to do an intervention on this for him.

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CAS

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NEW PLAYGROUND

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New angel!

mittensmorgul dumas? that's the name the superwiki has linked, but her page is blank

elizabethrobertajones Heh 3 musketeers again first in the off-brand nougat now that

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"If we had him he wouldn't be imprisoned he'd be put to work"

SHE WANTS NEW ANGELS

I don't freakin blame her

But Jack shouldn't be "put to work" either - he would have to want to do it.

Awww Cas getting protective over Jack before I'm done typing that of course this means Jack would be forced to do it and the angel says "No other choice" because of course she does.

As usual heaven isn't comic book evil but its purposes in the name of "good" are super shady. Even if Jack was pure evil himself, Heaven enslaving a powerful nephilim for its own purposes would be dodgy.

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Btw I am still torn about Cas's compulsion to care about Jack but on the other hand I am really enjoying Cas generally existing and being alive - and wait a minute she didn't even ask about how he was doing that - so I'm pretty much enjoying the surface level about Cas and Jack right now. Because of course I see the good in Jack that he DOES need protecting, so however Cas ended up on this, at least he is doing the right thing and taking the right stance.

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"Castiel, he's not your pet. He belongs to all of us."

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Uhoh, Cas is probably going to get grabbed.

*surprise*

Hey he did pretty well considering he's fighting 3 angels and is much weaker than them.

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Oh boy, here's Lucifer. This is gonna go great.

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Does Cas or Lucifer need to start this with the "you're supposed to be dead/in the AU" first?

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Lol, Cas is the first person in this entire damn episode to actually ask a relevant question, and it's one we already know the answer to

*waves a little flag for Cas though*

Hey and then Lucifer asks about Cas being alive, what do you know.

He then calls Cas "cowboy" and pretends like Cas wouldn't kick his ass.

I am pretty happy about the "cowboy" thing :P

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Lucifer has found a tan jacket somewhere, specifically one that looks like the one Jack was wearing but maybe a bit thicker, more like Cas's new coat. He's trying to edge in on this family and I can only assume this is not even a veiled metaphor for the douchey biological father wanting to be all interested in his son's business.

Lucifer in a tan jacket makes me think wolf in sheep's clothing.

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He does, however, shelve the issue of child custody for now, and he appears to be genuinely freaked out enough about Michael to make that a priority and tell Cas about it, because if you want help against Michael, we've had 2 references to Team Free Will in short succession and that was a phrase coined specifically to spite Michael...

I don't think Lucifer should be allowed in, remotely, because it's become a family term, but the imagery is interesting anyway that he is trying to leech off the success of TFW to accomplish the goals he could never do himself. Especially because it was blatant in season 5 to everyone but him that Michael would kick his butt since he already did it once before and nothing has changed, 12x12 confirmed Michael would kill him slowly, and now meeting an AU Michael, he discovers that yep Michael sure is stronger than him, even when he was the last strong archangel left, and then Michael took that from him...

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None of this, however, makes Lucifer sympathetic or good, just self-interested in not dying, and who is better at not dying than Cas?

I mean he wasn't even expecting to see Cas here, I guess he was going to a heaven portal to try and get them to listen?

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LOL Kingdom Beer sign over Cas and Lucifer having a chat in a bar.

Cas looks Weary.

"I came back from the dead to deal with THIS? Please take me back to yesterday when it was fun kinky cowboy times with Dean."

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I'm glad Cas isn't remotely friendly to Lucifer and is quick to remind him about how killed he got last time they hung out. Lucifer continues to be whiny and annoying about it all, unrepentant for killing Cas over petty nonsense.

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LOL Lucifer is like "this Michael is much more powerful"

buddy. dude. go watch 12x12 then get back to me about how whooped your butt would have been. I mean go look at that lovely painting of him whooping your butt that was in 12x12 and unrelated to the fact he had that fucking lance in the first place.

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Anyway he's trying to convince Cas to use his influence on Jack to get them to be the ultimate team up but they're fundamentally incapable of doing that because they're the 2 rival dads for Jack and blatantly symbolically being shown as that in these costumes, and that's one of the huge thematic things.

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Cas like "You are the Weakest Link, goodbye."

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I love Cas being so snarky, so maybe Lucifer being around is good in some respects, that it makes Cas this snarky because he has something to bounce off as awful and despised as Lucifer. Not even Crowley got THIS dismissive treatment, because they had emotional baggage that was of a whole different sort, whereas Cas and Lucifer have been opposite mirrors the whole time since season 4

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Lucifer is emphasising how he and Cas are the big cosmic powers around here, with Jack. Hm...

Lol Cas is like "I'm calling my guys who deal with these things" and Lucifer bangs his head on the table in despair. I guess this is like the boy who called wolf except that instead of calling wolf he was literally going around eating all the sheep and was banned from being a shepherd for life and locked away and got out and ate more sheep and was locked away and got out and ate more sheep and got locked away and THEN came back like oh hi something's gonna eat all our sheep.

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Lucifer then says Cas needs him and that he needs Cas and they all need Jack.

So Um I guess "Need" is The Worst Word right now :P

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"Jack. Your son's name is *Jack*" *pats Cas's hair*

Pfft themes "is he a chip off the old block?" "thankfully, no. he seems to favour the mother"

Theeeeeeeeemes

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Cas squinting when he lies - I don't think that's his lying tell because he does it too much, but perhaps uncertainty. The fact he squinted so much in the reintroduction huggy scene last episode feels to me less like lying and more like no clue what was going on and how mad he had to be about his humans sacrificing for him to come back.

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Laughing at all their labelled phones lying around permanently charging. I think this is the first proof we've ever seen that they have a Bobby phone bank, but I can't imagine who would rely on the Winchesters to answer the phone when they need proof of ID :P They're like ALWAYS being abducted or disappearing on cases.

Or dying.

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Okay so the phones are more just for their personal IDs for the cards THEY give out and they're just getting a call back from the motel for some reason, I suppose because Jack was with them (seriously. Dean gave the motel the name Jack? I have to assume Jack said his name before they could re-name him on the fly and so he was registered as a guest there as Jack the Nephilim because why the fuck not... Berens has a magic skill of un-fucking Buckleming canon but it seems Buckleming's skill is fucking up poor Davy's, in 12x13 and 12x17 and now here...)

ANYWAY jesus christ Asmodeus is stupid. "Evil Colonel Sanders" literally walked in and abducted Karl in person which means that his stupid ass questions weren't even because his minions brought him the guy and presented him in an idiotic way, but our shapeshifting villain wandered in and took Karl, himself in person with his own freaking face that the Winchesters KNEW and is extremely memorable, and took his prize.

...

DHJ better turn out to be Asmodeus even though I think their screentime overlapped and this makes no freaking sense since he has some established history wandering around attacking witches before they caught up with him.

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I'd rather have a time plothole than a stupid plothole :P

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Anyway DHJ is hanging out with them in the library eating a sandwich because... um

reasons?

At least he's in chains.

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Oh my god I said that sarcastically moments before Sam said it sincerely and then pointed out there's no bathroom in the armoury

what the fuck

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Like I said up top: as stupid as the villain is, your main characters have to be about as dumb as they are, either only just enough to outwit them, or more stupid if they get outwitted...

Poor Sammy, he was having such a fantastic season

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Dean just straight up pretends Mary is phone when DHJ asks because why the heck would you monologue your sad life story to the bad guy, and give him emotional leverage over you? Especially when he ASKS because "Alexander" should have no knowledge of Mary or care about her, but then he also shouldn't know the DHJ interview details of Ketch's inner life.

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YAY Dean and Cas are talking and Dean phoned Cas probably just to hear a sane voice because Cas is managing to weave around being Buckleminged, so far, possibly just because he was not in the opening half of the episode, and then this was a really important conversation they couldn't fuck up so probably got supervised.

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elizabethrobertajones tee hee Cas standing by the gents to take a call from Dean wait hang on ... I'm not even being jokey I literally just had that moment in the chat with you :P *rewinds* Longing retcon Confirmed Oh dear that is hilarious I don't know if that's the moment you wanted me to see or not but I'm delighted :P

elizabethrobertajones Cas was standing away from Lucifer ready to take Dean's phone call and had to have walked off up to a minute before he called, but most likely in that time when Dean was like UGH I need to talk to Cas and hear the one sane voice in this episode and Cas was like... Brb I... have to use... the 'Gents' and got up and wandered off to take the call eat it, 12x10 and that "where's my phone" moment I mean Buckleming introduced it to fill a plothole so why should they not use it to cover more plotholes at their leisure

... did Speight know? I mean he coulda been like what the heckeroo, and added Cas getting the call and legging it from the table.

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The only other option I can think of is Cas decided he may as well just get up to "go pee" because Lucifer is so annoying that pretending he needs to go to the loo buys him 5 minutes to let his migraine subside.

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Also what the fuck DHJ was wandering around the bunker so he could use the bathroom. I am confused. Is this actually like... being hinted at. Like, "hey children, please remember who does and doesn't need to use the bathroom in this episode"

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Omg

Cas like "I would *like* to see you too" is he literally pretending he and Dean were canoodling on the phone as a cover?

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I hate everything

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Anyway need/want blah blah I have been over that a lot lately :P Cas is using his DESIRE to see Dean to get help, by Lucifer saying he NEEDS Cas.

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"Smooth was never your strong suit" oh my god Lucifer also thought Cas was pretending to be flirty too what is going on

why has this episode confirmed all the headcanons about Cas being the most shittiest phone sex guy ever

of all the things.

why.

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DHJ wants to go because he misses being in on the action with the guys

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Like. No, go take your sandwich and sit down.

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Dean is sad about Cas always getting killed by Lucifer and stuff when he does stupid things.

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Cas's "ugh stop talking Lucifer" face is a whole layer more existential misery than dealing with Crowley... I think he was secretly fond of Crowley or at least enjoyed hating him, whereas Lucifer is just EXHAUSTING.

He's needling Cas for attention.

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LOL randomly Asmodeus as if Cas's headache wasn't bad enough, now we got thunder and lightning and very very frightening...

Pfft.

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bahahaha Lucifer called Asmodeus the dim bulb

I mean he's not wrong, Asmodeus has been completely idiotic all episode. And of course, narratively, his "evil plans" are just self-interest which will endanger the entire world because even if Lucifer is a twat, he has a point about the coming danger of Michael, and Asmodeus just refuses to see the danger, which is all kinds of various political commentary, and using his era aesthetic to say this kind of thinking is such a throwback...

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I think this might be the most confused Cas has ever been about if he should stab someone or not - if he actually WANTS to defend Lucifer. Not really, but Asmodeus seems like a bigger problem because at least Lucifer isn't trying to kill him.

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I hope this just randomly gets Asmodeus killed.

Or Lucifer

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Asmodeus just called Lucifer "screwable"... do they even know what they said? :P

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EEEP there was a Margiekugel sign and it just flickered off

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"Nick's bar" pfft because Lucifer?

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It seems like Sam and Dean are too late and Asmodeus already made off with everyone?

I hope Cas is okay

being held captive by that idiot seems like a fate worse than death. You're going to get villain monologues all day.

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Anyway fight fight fight

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Good fight.

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Where did DHJ even come from?

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that was a ridiculous nonsense about how he escaped. I also will die if he took Dorothy's bike and not his own left stashed there. Also he nodded at Dean like hey you didn't cavity search me like you should have, which... Is he actually Ketch?

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He's actually Ketch

Of course that means Dean knows him very well and trusted his gut instinct on knowing Ketch to prove that he was not, in fact, the actor David Hayden Jones, chillaxing on set and being weirdly cheerful about being beaten up by the Winchesters.

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Pfft he used Rowena's charm to get alive again

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Well she better be fine if they're gonna use her like this.

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"Is she?"

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LOL Ketch ninja'd out of there

Oh good it wasn't Dorothy's bike

Considering how they use Rowena, DON'T use Mary, etc I'd have taken Dorothy's bike as a personal insult. I guess Ketch rode his over to the Bunker before 12x22.

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I mean at least this means Ketch remembers he got shot and then also he revived in a sewer where he belonged because he is garbage.

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Wait. He set up this whole thing in like a month or so TOPS since he got shot? If he’s been chasing witches has he even had TIME for a side business?

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Oh boy, Asmodeus using Cas's voice to talk to Dean.

BAD HELLO DEAN.

That "see you soon" is also way too cheerful. It should be as much of a tip off as Cas begging Dean to come help him in the previous call.

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I hope Dean sees through it.

Though it's so Buckleming-y I don't think people should be mad if he doesn't because this was them doing a smart!Dean episode.

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PFFT of course they team up - colonialism from all sorts of fun angles!! The ultimate trashy white guys in suits team up.

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Thanks Buckleming!

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Man, I need a whole pot of detox tea now. I don't even have closing thoughts.

[mhevarujta]

We can’t blame the new writers and producers for wanting to be timely. Their goal is to appeal to a new generation -with younger characters- and address the most pressing issues women face nowadays (the “case of the week” part is about a professor who’s a predator). So let me rephrase it: the Charmed reboot is fiercier, funnier and more feminist than the original show. I’m not sure it sounds better but you’ll have to deal with it! That being said, the script tries way too hard to look “woke”. More subtlety wouldn’t have hurt anyone. They’re clearly making a statement here, let’s just hope they relax a little after the pilot, not making it too heavy all the time.

The whole Mel character, the middle sister who’s a passionate feminist and an outspoken activist -with the ability to freeze time- sounds a little too cliché, especially when you add the fact that she’s a lesbian. Hear me out: it’s great there’s a lesbian sister in the show, that’s one of the reasons why this version is modern. BUT it might have been more interesting to give the feminist attribute to another character, so we don’t fall into the usual ��feminists are homosexuals (who hate men)” trap. Still, she’s probably the most interesting character here; after the family tragedy, she becomes angry and violent, she loses her way, she loses her girlfriend too -Soo Jin, who’s a detective in Hilltowne- so she adds darkness to a show that’s not light-hearted. Maybe that’s the biggest difference with the original Charmed: it can be funny because the dialogues are sometimes great and inspired -and we recognize the Jane The Virginteam here- but it’s pretty gloomy overall. The family manor is right in the middle of frightening woods, not in a sunny street of San Francisco. The opening sequence leans towards the horrific genre, with jump scares, fog, crows, murder of crows even… Same goes for the end with a Ouija board in the attic, and whisperings… A totally different atmosphere that is closer to Buffy, Riverdale or American Horror Story than good ol’ Charmed.

The younger sister, Madison, is the complete opposite of Mel. She’s 18, your typical millenial girl who’s worried about her social identity -too bad for her, she can hear other people’s thoughts- and she’s not happy at all to discover that she’s a witch. She has a wry sense of humor and she’s part of a sorority that will probably play a major role in the subsequent episodes, between the mean girls she wants to be friends with and the weird guys that are lurking around her. She will probably become a fan favorite. Last but not least, the older sister who didn’t know she had sisters until recently: Macy, a “science nerd” in her late 20s with a Ph.D. in quantum physics. She’s moving with her boyfriend named Galvin to Hilltowne to do lab work. She possesses the power of telekinesis. Her love story is already totally boring and I’m not sure Gavin will stick around much longer. Finally, there’s Harry, the girls’ “devilishly handsome” advisor, refered to as a “whitelighter” like Leo was, who adds a lot of humor and eccentricity whenever he appears. Think Eliot in The Magicians. But he’s not exactly who he says he is…

You’re probably wondering if the Book of Shadows is still part of the story and the answer is yes. The Power of Three? Yes, of course. Are the Halliwell sisters part of the story or even refered to? Not at all. I don’t think they will ever exist in this version. It’s not a sequel. If the overall tone is darker, they kept most of the original show’s premice. They’re still the most powerful witches ever known, destined to protect both innocents and the world at large from demons and other devil creatures. They didn’t lie: it really is an update of the same concept with characters that are more diverse. It’s not just using the show’s name and popularity to do something totally different. It’s fast-paced, with transitions throughout that consist of three quick cuts which are in fact small slices of each women’s stories. Think How To Get Away Murder. They do something similar. I find it irritating on paper here and it doesn’t add much but why the hell not after all… We’re promised monsters of the week cases as well as ongoing stories about the witches’ love lives while the bigger picture is probably kept for later, once they will be familiar with their powers.

The Charmed fans will be pissed to read this but this pilot script is pretty decent. It’s not an insult to the original though they’re doing like The Halliwells never existed (and some might find that insulting, I get it). It’s modern and as feminist as they claimed, though subtlety is not their strong suit. The characters have things to say and stories to tell that should be heard in those troubled times. In other words, it’s not revolutionary in any way but it’s not the trainwreck haters would like it to be and there’s really nothing to rally against. Ignore it, don’t watch it, just let it be. There are more important battles worth fighting for.

[marvelandponder]

Through the Fire and the Flames, We Carry On

So, Honest Apple. This is the first episode this season I’m rating more negatively than positively, I think.

It’s not really my style to rail into things, and as a super fan I always find little things to love even in episodes I consider less than stellar, so this post isn’t a rage-boner, believe you me. I know some fans have grown averse to hearing criticism of the show they love because other fans have been so scathing in their analysis before, but hopefully we can take the burn out of it and focus on what’s interesting about it. Plus, yeah, there’s a number of cool details I can’t wait to get to. 

I’ll start with the major stuff, and get to the fun part later.

The major problem with this episode is characterization and the pacing of it. It’s not that it’s out of character, really, but that it’s paced in such a way that it might feel out of character. Sounds like a weird problem, but its a problem nonetheless.

The big one is Applejack. 

Spelling it Out 

It’s no secret that Applejack has a stubborn streak and can be stuck in her ways. She’s had to deliver hard truths even knowing the price. And, of course, she and Rarity notoriously tease each other for their frou-frou and rustic lifestyles respectively, so AJ doesn’t understand the appeal behind fashion.

Yet, I think this episode portrays her as too inconsiderate too fast.

Other analysts have pointed out that even if AJ doesn’t get the appeal behind a fancy hat, she could respect the amount of work that went into it. And if not that, her at this point long history with Rarity has clearly taught her to respect Rarity and her line of work a great deal.

And if not that, there’s the fact that Applejack usually isn’t thoughtless to other ponies feelings. It can happen if she’s, say, very angry or yes, even just very stubborn on an issue, but in most situations you’ll find her going out of her way to make her friends feel better.

While you can argue that it’s in-character, especially after episodes like Hearthbreakers and Winter Wrap-Up, the pacing almost makes it feel a little too far out of character. Going from reasonable and level-headed to not understanding the difference between opinion and fact as fast as Applejack does doesn’t quite work.

And I think this is mostly because of how the moral is handled.

Rarity needing to spell it out for Applejack, as funny as it is, makes AJ seem almost deluded. It takes her an exceedingly long time to figure out ‘wait... my opinions aren’t the most important thing???’ and at this point I’m talking in circles, but you can sort of see why this episode’s exploration of a character’s flaws doesn’t entirely work for me. It’s a little too much too fast.

The only other big negative is one that wouldn’t make or break the episode on its own, and ironically it’s one of the funnier gags the episode has to offer:

Rarity breaking out into a metal solo.

Immersion Break

Why is it a problem if it’s funny? This is a Pinkie gag. 

Pinkie is the one able to bust out the Random, the fourth-wall breaks, and the meta-humour. There’s a reason its usually limited to just her breaking out into 90s-inspired rap sequences or pulling Back to the Future references out of nowhere.

When you start allowing other characters the same powers as Pinkie or Discord, it messes with the immersion of the world. Now, I can totally buy Rarity having a Drama Couch on hand at a moment’s notice and not needing much of an explanation because as cartoonish as that gag is, it’s in her character to be that prepared and that, well, dramatic.

The guitar solo joke isn’t really. You don’t expect Rarity to be able to do that, which is why the joke works and even could be considered a subversion, but again, you don’t expect Rarity to be able to do that. 

Reason being: she’s not even really playing an electric guitar, meaning this is a meta joke for the audience where they even break out a flaming background. Meaning, she doesn’t normally know how to shred, she’s just illustrating a point to you.

It’s a bit too close to meta for comfort with a character like Rarity. Pinkie, I would have no problems with, but even if I find this funny, it did sort of pull me out of the world the first time I saw it.

So, I just spent a lot of time talking about the two things that bothered me, but do I really hate this episode? No.

In fact, there are some really neat things to love about it!

Details, Thoughts, and Whatnots

Sometimes you’re rewarded if you pay close attention to colours in Friendship is Magic. In this episode, when Applejack apologizes to Rarity and Rarity forgives her, the sky itself blends orange and purple to match how close they feel again:

The valley girl pony chokes on how much she can’t even. She’s actually gagging because she can’t even so hard. I love that the show staff interpreted ‘cant’ even’ as ‘can’t even breathe properly’

Goth pony and Maud would make great friends, don’t you think?

APPLEJACK WITH HER HAIR UP CONFIRMED FOR THE CUTEST THING:

The episode is 1000% worth its faults for that right there

I love how Applejack’s just walking in the background when Rarity announces her name. It makes for great staging and really funny sight gag when you know it’s coming. Good use of foreground and background, for sure.

While it felt sort of unnecessary to cutaway from Applejack’s decision after building up tension for it, that ending scene with Rarity and Applejack joking with each other is pure and adorable, more of that please

As always Pinkie showing up just to make funny jokes and help the main characters of the story is always, always welcomed. I love that her wanting guitar lessons could be its own subplot.

Speaking of characters that have an appearance in this episode, oh hey, Spike still has a crush on Rarity. I honestly thought he’d gotten over that in Inspiration Manifestation when Rarity told him how much it means to have him as a friend, but I guess the little guy still has hope. I would ship it harder if he wasn’t a dog compared to a Rares the human in the EQG/ human universe

I can’t get over how savage she was to Applejack. It’s the best thing. Just like, oh hey? You spend your entire life dedicated to this thing? It’s the worst fruit and full of worms and you disgust me kthnxbye~

Applejack crying when she realizes what she did wrong is a thing of beauty. I swear, this season seems to be the season of tears (which sounds like an insult but it isn’t)

Photo Finish and Hoity Toity! Long time, no see! Photo Finish is still clearly the superior pony, just announcing everything she does, but you know I love me some continuity, so it’s good to see them back.

There’s some good dialogue in this episode. Like I said, even if I didn’t buy how fast Applejack turned from in the right to extremely unreasonable, I love that her commentary on some things makes sense for her to say, like how she will never understand ripped jeans (she says, hiding her ripped shorts under the bed...)

So, all in all, definitely not the worst episode out there, but it’s problems are the first thing I think of when I think back on this episode. 

There’s some good, there’s some bad, but in the end, all of that is just my opinion anyway, huh?

More pony stuff? Yeah, I’ve got that! I’ve done other reviews, editorials, and here’s the last three things I’ve done, just to make it easy on you:

Trailer Analysis, Comic Con Coverage, and Hard to Saying Anything Review

Year of the Pony 

Special Thanks to Millennial Dan on Deviantart, who made the Microphone vector for the logo!

If Someone on Staff Doesn’t Ship Rarijack, I Lose Ten Bucks